Relidion and 



Historic Faiths 

l)yOttoPfleiderer,D.D 




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COFWIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Religion and Historic Faiths 



Religion and 
Historic Faiths 



BY 

OTTO PFLEIDERER, D.D. 

Professor in the University of Berlin 



TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY 

DANIEL A. HUEBSCH, Ph.D. 



Authorized Edition 



NEW YORK 

B. W. HUEBSCH 

1907 






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Copyright, 1907, by 
B. W. HUEBSCH 



"Religion und Religionen" 

Published May 15, 1906. 

Privilege of Copyright in the United States 

reserved under the Act approved March 3, 1905, by 

J. F. Lbhmann, Miinchen. 



PREFACE 

The lectures here published were delivered at 
the University of Berlin during the last winter 
semester before an audience composed of students of 
all the faculties and older non-collegiates ; some of 
the lectures were also given in a public course at a 
high-school. The hearty reception accorded to 
them by both audiences was a pleasing proof of 
present-day active growth of interest in things re- 
ligious in all circles. 

On the basis of stenographic reports, without 
material change, I have prepared the contents of 
these lectures for press ; so that, as far as possible, 
the spirit of the spoken word would be caught by 
the reader. The limited period set for each lecture 
required a curtailment of the quotations, but in most 
cases, they have been inserted in this volume at 
proper length. The close of the semester prevented 
the actual delivery of the concluding lecture on 
Islam; completeness, however, made such an omis- 
sion here impossible. 

It is self-evident that within the narrow limits of 
these lectures only the essentials of the wealth of 
material afforded by the history of religion could 
be chosen for emphasis. In the selection, my deci- 

5 



Preface 

sion was guided by the wish to draw the clearest 
possible picture of the characteristic features of 
the religions, showing their points of difference 
and of contact. The three introductory lectures 
will make clear the view-points which served as my 
standards. Perhaps it would be advisable to recom- 
mend to those readers who are less interested in the 
philosophical reflections contained in the opening 
lectures, that they begin at the fourth lecture, and 
after having read the historical matter, turn back 
to the portion devoted to the philosophy of religion. 

For deeper study, I refer the reader to my larger 
work ^' Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtlicher 
Grundlage,'' (3 Aufl. 1896), and to the text-books 
on the general history of religion by Tiele, Chan- 
tepie de Saussaye, Orelli and Menzies; in them, 
lists of books treating of the separate religions are 
given. 

Otto Pfleiderer. 

Gross-Lichterfelde, March, 1906. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 

9 



AND THE 



I The Essence of Religion 

II Religion and Ethics 

III Religion and Science 

IV The Beginnings of Religion 
V The Chinese Religion 

VI The Egyptian Religion . 

VII The Babylonian Religion 

VIII The Religion of Zarathustra 
MiTHRA Cult . 

IX Brahmanism and Gautama Buddha 

X Buddhism ...... 

XI The Greek Religion 

XII The Religion of Israel . 

' XIII Post-Exilic Judaism 231 

XIV Christianity 252 

XV Islam . 274 



29 

47 
68 

89 
103 
120 

134 

153 
170 
190 
211 



Religion and Historic Faiths 



THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION 

Before we enter into the consideration of the 
various historical religions, we must make clear 
answer to the question: What are we to under- 
stand by religion generally? The simplest answer 
to this question was contained in the etymological 
explanation given by the church-father Lactantius: 
''Religion is the attachment to God by the bond 
of piety/' This definition is entirely correct, but it 
requires explication in order to demonstrate its gen- 
eral applicability. 

As is well known, there are some religions which 
do not believe in one God, but in a plurality of gods 
or spirits, or even in some vague but divine some- 
thing, such as the power of fate and the like. In 
order to make our definition hold good for these 
religions, we will be compelled to take the concep- 
tion " god " in a general sense ; something like this : 
That to which the religious man feels himself bound 
is a supernatural, world-governing power. True, to 
this, there immediately does appear the objection 
that the gods of the lower religions do not govern 

9 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

the "world," that the savage does not even have 
this latter conception. The conception " world," in 
our sense of universe, does presuppose a trained 
understanding, such as we are not able to accept 
as present at the beginnings of mankind. Never- 
theless, it remains correct that even the savage 
believes " his world," that is the sum of the objects 
of his experience, to be bound to his god as the 
ruling power. Deity everywhere is the power which 
unites the manifold experience of each separate ex- 
istence, the individual to his social group and his 
nature-environment into a whole, and somehow 
ordering this whole, governs it. 

Toward this superior power man first has the 
feeling of powerlessness and dependence ; he knows 
that his weal and woe depend upon it. Naturally, 
he feels the woe more keenly and in so far it was not 
entirely incorrect, when it was said : " Fear created 
the gods in the beginning." But that is not the 
whole truth ; man has thought the possessions which 
he had or hoped for to be dependent on the divine 
power as well as the evils which he feared, and, 
therefore, he felt himself bound to it not only by 
fear but also by gratitude and confidence. Goethe 
has emphasized this side of religious feeling par- 
ticularly in his beautiful words : 

"In our bosom's pure, we struggle ever 
To yield ourselves of our own free will 
In gratitude to a higher, purer, unknown— 
We call it being pious." 

ID 



The Essence of Religion 

A being, to whom I can yield myself in gratitude, 
is not only an object of fear, but also of confidence. 
Therewith, mere fear becomes reverence and the 
simple feeling of dependence rises to an obligation 
to obedience, to voluntary subordination and sur- 
render. Toward greater human beings, before 
whose power we bow and upon whose friendly 
attitude we depend, we have respect and a sense 
of duty. But toward men this feeling of attach- 
ment is always conditioned, because, despite all 
superiority, they stand on a level with us in the 
matter of human limitation and imperfection. It 
is different with the divine power, which governs 
our entire universe: it stands in unmeasurable 
superiority beyond us and all who are like us ; with 
regard to it, we feel ourselves to be absolutely 
dependent, in duty bound to absolute subordination, 
attached to it with all our being and our will. In 
so far Schleiermacher was right in his character- 
ization of religious feeling as that of '' absolute 
dependence." 

This definition, however, may easily lead to mis- 
understanding, as though religion consisted of an 
unfree, slavish dependence, which excluded any and 
all freedom. Such is not at all the case. In the 
statement that we feel ourselves in duty bound to 
subordinate ourselves to the divine power, there is 
contained the declaration that that subordination is 
a free act of our will, not a fate which we suffer 
passively, but an activity on our part, which is 

II 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

demanded of us. A necessity which is not free 
rules only in nature, her laws act automatically ; but 
in man, the law of the whole becomes a demand 
upon the will, obedience to which is not compelled, 
but which only can and should be performed volun- 
tarily. Schiller has put this difference aptly in his 
well-known distich : 

"Seek'st thou the highest, the greatest? The plant can thy 
teacher be : 
What, lacking will, it is, be thou with will; that 'tis." 

This attachment to God through the will is the 
piety, the faith, which the Apostle Paul has desig- 
nated as an " obedience of the heart." Further- 
more, man is not afraid that, by this free obedience 
or surrender to God, he will lose his human free- 
dom and dignity; but, on the contrary, he is confi- 
dent that, in the alliance with God, he will achieve 
freedom from the limitations and fetters of sur- 
rounding nature, and those worse limitations and 
fetters of nature within us. The manifold desires 
and fears of the natural man constitute his slavery, 
making him unf ree and unhappy ; in that, the Bible 
agrees with the wise men of all ages — let me remind 
you of the Stoics and of Spinoza. The elevation 
above nature to God, the surrender of personal will 
to the divine will in obedience and confidence leads to 
freedom from the miserable bondage to, and degra- 
dation under, nature. Seneca said, at his early 
day : " To obey God is to be free." 

True, as to what this release means^ or what the 

12 



The Essence of Religion 

content of that happiness is which the pious man 
seeks with, and hopes for, from God, there have 
been widely differing notions, each on a level with 
the spiritual and moral plane of development of men. 
From the pleading of primitive peoples that their 
gods should help to defeat their enemies or bring 
rain or fruitfulness to their fields up to the prayer 
of the pious Psalmist : " Create in me a clean heart, 
O God, and renew a right spirit within me ! " — there 
is certainly a long road whose stations we will pass 
in our journey through the history of the religions. 
Despite differences of content, of purposes, of reli- 
gious striving, this much remains unchanged : man 
seeks freedom from the limitations of the world and 
from the unrest of his own heart in the alliance 
with God. 

You know that beautiful saying of Augustine in 
his Confessions : " Thou hast created us for Thy- 
self, therefore, our hearts are restless until they find 
rest in Thee." The theme of the entire history of 
religion might be found in that sentence — the driv- 
ing-force and the law of its development from the 
naive beginnings of primitive religion up to the 
highest height of a religion of the spirit. Note 
well: in order to understand a development either 
of the natural or the spiritual life, according to its 
innermost meaning and principle, the lowest forms 
must not be taken as the standard of measure and 
made the explanatory reason of the whole ; but just 
the reverse^ in the highest, that which appears last, 

13 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

the key must be sought which will explain the whole, 
even its crudest beginnings. By the acorn one 
cannot recognize what kind of an oak will grow; 
not until the tree is full-grown is it disclosed. The 
new-born child gives no knowledge of the nature 
of the future man, — it does not become known until 
the man has reached maturity. Thus, too, concern- 
ing the essence of a religion, one must not judge by 
its lowest beginnings but by its later heights ; then, 
for the first time, the deeper meaning, hidden in the 
beginning as the unconscious instinct in the child- 
ish play, is uncovered and revealed. 

It is a pity that this is overlooked so often to-day ; 
we would be spared the curious naturalistic theories 
of some scholars who are industriously engaged in 
ferreting out the crude beginnings of religions, but 
who seem to have no sense of what is really essential 
in them. As a type of all such, I take Feuerbach, 
the best-known and, in his way, the cleverest rep- 
resentative of that one-sided tendency which has 
contributed so much toward discrediting religious- 
historical studies and causing many friends of reli- 
gion to regard them with suspicion. 

From the undeniable fact, that in the lower 
stages of religion, the fulfillment of wishes, mainly 
sensual and selfish, is sought for by prayers and 
sacrifices, Feuerbach drew the conclusion that reli- 
gion altogether was nothing more than a product of 
the selfish heart and the dreaming fancy; the gods 
were " wishing-beings," whom man invented to 

14 



The Essence of Religion 

deceive himself as to his own weakness. If that be 
true, how explain the riddle that a simple deception 
persisted among all peoples during thousands of 
years? And that a construction of unreason, of 
the diseased egoistic heart, has proved to be the 
most effective means of conquering natural egoism, 
of basing and upholding reasonable customs, order 
and culture, in short, has proved to be the principal 
means of moral education of humanity, as the his- 
tory of religion indisputably teaches ? If it be true 
here, too, that " by their fruits ye shall know them," 
then by their reasonable effects we may draw the 
justified conclusion that according to its innermost 
essence (naturally not according to its constantly 
imperfect forms of manifestation) religion is not 
an illusion or deception, but highest truth, — and its 
origin is not to be found in the unreason of the 
selfish heart, but must be sought in reason itself, the 
divine tendency of our race, which contains our 
capacity and destiny to rise above and beyond 
nature. 

From the time of Plato and Aristotle, all earnest 
thinkers have agreed that the idea of God belongs 
of necessity to our reason. We differentiate two 
modes of the activity of the reason. As cognos- 
citive (theoretical) reason, it strives to achieve a 
harmonious order of all of our ideas by tracing all 
particular being and becoming back to one all- 
encompassing uniform cause. This uniform, har- 
monious order and combination of all the varied 

15 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

phenomena is the idea of truth, the climax of theo- 
retical reason, which is at the bottom of all of 
its will to know. Thereupon, reason looks to the 
desire-activities of our soul and seeks to establish 
order and harmony there, also, by classing all 
objects or purposes of the will according to their 
relative values, according as each is not only pur- 
pose of the individual for the moment, but for all 
and for all time; and here, too, reason, striving 
for unity, does not rest content until all particular 
purposes are subordinated to one highest, abso- 
lutely valuable purpose, which is the idea of the 
goody that which ought to be, the climax of prac- 
tical reason, which all reasonable willing and striv- 
ing looks forward to as its highest goal or ideal. 
Will it be possible for reason to rest satisfied defi- 
nitely with this dualism of highest ideas, the idea 
of the true and the idea of the good ? 

Let us remember well that the one does not coin- 
cide absolutely with the other; on the contrary, in 
the world of phenomena, both always form a more 
or less distinct contradiction: the ideal of what 
ought to be is never one with what actually is, but, 
to a certain extent, always bears the relation of 
opposition and negation to present reality. So it 
seems that practical reason, whose guiding star is 
the ideal of the good, stands in irreconcilable con- 
flict with theoretical reason, which is occupied with 
the truth of being. Yet it is one and the same 
reason which seeks to bring about a perfect unity 

i6 



The Essence of Religion 

and harmony of our whole spiritual life. Will it be 
possible for that one reason to rest finally with a 
conflict and a dualism of the idea of the true and the 
idea of the good ? Some have thought reason ought 
to rest content thus, because a resolution of this 
contradiction into a higher unity will not be capable 
of proof. Certainly, in the world of the manifold 
and of the becoming, of space and of time, the high- 
est unity will never be found, the contradiction of 
is and ought will never disappear completely. For 
that very cause, if reason does not wish to give itself 
up, it cannot do other than elevate itself above the 
world to a last and highest unity, in which all con- 
tradictions, even that of the true and the good, are 
unified, — to God. 

Yes, God is the word which solves all world- 
riddles, even the most difficult, which lies in that 
contradiction of is and ought; in the idea of God, 
reason striving for unity finds its ultimate object, 
in which alone it can be at rest, which from the 
beginning hovered before it always, as the impel- 
ling motive and regulative of all of its interpreta- 
tive purpose — determining thinking, — actually the 
alpha and omega, the presupposition and the goal of 
all of its thoughts. But, because the idea of God 
is the presupposition of the truth of all of our 
thinking, — ^the basis of the connection of our whole 
world-picture, — therefore, the truth of this idea can 
not itself be demonstrated by any single series of 
thoughts, and can not be laid bare as a single 

17 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

member in the connection of our world-picture; to 
expect or to demand that would simply be self- 
contradiction. In so far, it is true, it does remain 
true that God is the object of our belief and not 
an object of demonstrable knowledge by reasoned 
proofs. 

This belief, however, is not an arbitrary hypothe- 
sis, — taken on the simple basis of some outside 
authority or even by denial of reason, — but, on the 
contrary, the belief in God is the revelation of the 
innermost nature of reason absolute, of its divine 
necessity superior to all arbitrariness, or, in other 
words, the revelation of God within the human 
spirit. Naturally, this ^' revelation " does not re- 
lieve man of self-activity; it does not come to him 
as a finished gift, but as a duty, as an irresistible 
impulse to rise above all finite contradictions to the 
Supreme unity, which is the cause of all that is and 
the goal of all that ought to be. (Rom. xi, 36. 
*' For of him, and through him, and to him, are 
all things.") It is the necessity of the task which 
guarantees that, to some extent, it is solvable; if 
it be a divine impulse of the spirit which urges 
us to seek God, then it is a divine power of the 
spirit which will enable us to find him — find him so 
far at least as it is possible for children of Time to 
grasp the eternal Spirit ; ever more and more closely, 
ever shrouded in a symbol, ever in the reflected- 
picture of the finite, ever in some dark riddle of a 
mysterious secret. 

18 



The Essence of Religion 

But however inapt our words, however inadequate 
our conceptions of God are and may remain, the 
truth of the beHef in God itself is in nowise shaken, 
resting as it does on the '' demonstration of the 
Spirit and of power" (i Cor. ii, 4.). The beHef 
in God gives our reason the guarantee of its own 
truth and at the same time of all other thinking and 
knowing in the world ; it gives to our conscience the 
firm support of our feeling of duty; it gives to our 
will the courage to hope and to our action the 
power of accomplishment. " What the reason of 
the reasonable cannot see, a childlike spirit does in 
its simplicity. " It is certainly the most difficult 
task of human life to find the compromise between 
freedom and necessity, between the world's harsh 
reality and the ideal of an aspiring heart. What 
helps man to perform that task at least acceptably 
is the belief in God, in which that contradiction finds 
eternal solution, because He is the cause of all being 
and, at the same time, the accomplishment of all 
that ought to be. 

So the belief in God proves its truth by helping 
man to the recognition of his destiny in the world 
and to the fulfillment thereof. But it not only helps 
to solve problems, it is itself — being the highest syn- 
thesis, the unity of the deepest contradictions — the 
deepest problem offered to man, with which he has 
struggled through thousands of years of history 
and will have to struggle in the future. It is de- 
termined of God " that they should seek the 

19 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

Lord if haply they might feel after him, and find 
him, though he is not far from each one of us. 
For in him we live, and move, and have our 
being. . . ." (Acts xvii, 2J, 28.) 

The subject of the entire history of religion is 
given in these words of Paul; it is a perpetual 
seeking after God, an ever-renewed effort to feel him 
and to find him, the unfathomable, who is so near 
to us, the intangible, who does encompass us all 
as our life-element. It is to be expected that in 
these attempts to feel and to find the highest unity, 
the balance would be now on one side and now on 
the other of the two contradictions unified in God; 
and a glance at the main forms of the historical 
religions confirms our expectations. Two groups 
they form: the one group seeks God in the world, 
as the cause of all being, as the reality behind all 
phenomena, as the law of necessity; the other 
group thinks of God as the ideal of freedom, as the 
supermundane will of the good, as the master 
and director of history through which he will 
realize his purpose. The former are religions of 
immanence (God in the world) or of pantheism, 
relatively polytheism; the latter are religions of 
transcendence (God beyond the world) or of 
monotheism. Each of these ideas of God has a 
mood of piety corresponding to it; in the former, 
quiet contemplation preponderates, a feeling either 
of joy or of resigned submission to the present 
condition of things ordered by God; while in the 

20 



The Essence of Religion 

latter, active striving preponderates, the struggle 
against the world for God and the hope of a future 
actualization of the divine good. 

Not to anticipate too much the historical pres- 
entation which follows, I will limit myself to a few 
brief suggestions. The classic representatives of 
the first kind of religions (they might be termed the 
esthetic-contemplative group) were the Indians and 
the Greeks. Both began with a childlike, joyous 
nature-religion, which worshipped the workings of 
the gods in the phenomena of nature and in the 
arrangements of social life, and regarded the divine 
only as so far above reality as they saw the estheti- 
cally exalted joy of life and beauty of the world in 
the gods. Gradually the many nature-gods became 
less distinct; contemplative thinking began to con- 
sider them as the varied manifestations of the one 
divine being, which, as the world-soul or Brahma, 
is the permanent basis behind the gay round of 
phenomena, finally became the all-one, true being, — 
in contrast to which the world of the many and 
the changeable sinks into a mere unsubstantial 
semblance. When man is aware of the semblance, 
when he grows conscious of his unity with the all- 
one, he is free of the joys and sorrows of the world 
and, in the silent rest of abnegation, he enjoys the 
highest inner happiness of peace, which, removed 
from the changes of time, is superior to fears and 
hopes. A contemplative piety this, which may well 
satisfy the world-weary spirit, but never gives cour- 

21 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

age or strength. It was so, too, with the Greeks, 
when Homer's beautiful world of gods was lost in 
the pantheism of the Eleatic and Heraclitean philos- 
ophy and Orphic mysticism. There, too, the world 
becomes vain semblance or a purposeless circle of 
phenomena, a senseless child's-play from which, 
non-participating and hopeless, the wise man with- 
draws. 

And now, with that group, contrast the religion 
of struggle and hope, conscious of its purpose; the 
classic representatives in ancient times were the 
Iranian prophet Zarathustra and the prophets of 
Israel. Here, God is the supermundane ideal of the 
good, the self-glorious will, which does not evanesce 
in the world but thrones above it as its Creator and 
Lord; at this time the struggle for lordship still 
continues against the inimical powers of reality, and 
only through this struggle, wherein man is in duty 
bound to fight on the side of God, will His rule be 
triumphant in the future and the realm of the good 
be brought into being. How far removed from the 
childlike, joyous optimism of nature-religion are 
these prophets! But how far, too, from the life- 
weary resignation of pantheism! Their piety con- 
sists in a wrathful and condemnatory opposition to 
wicked reality and in a battle for God's good cause 
against the false nature-gods and against the un- 
righteousness of men. An energetic piety it is which 
looks upon the earth as a field of battle, upon man 
as a fellow-soldier for God and upon the world's 

22 



The Essence of Religion 

history as the path to the world- judgment and the 
government of God; but, naturally, it is not free 
from the one-sidedness and the warmth of men of 
will and militant nature. 

And now, how about Christianity? It stands 
above the contradiction because it sought to com- 
bine both sides into a unity from the beginning — 
the immanence and the transcendence of God, the 
salvation of man that is and that ought to be, the 
mood of combat and of hope, and that of peace and 
of joy in the present inner possession of the highest 
good. On the one hand, it says, " Thy Kingdom 
come " (and " perish the earth," the oldest Chris- 
tians added in their pessimistic view of the world). 
On the other hand, there was a conviction, present 
from the beginning, that the Kingdom of God is 
now here, internally, within us, in the form of the 
righteousness, joy and peace accomplished by the 
divine spirit in the heart. (Rom. xiv, 17. Luke 
xvii, 21). Here, God is the supermundane Lord, 
who guides history toward the purpose of his com- 
ing Kingdom and who will destroy his enemies all 
on the great day of judgment ; while there. Christian 
faith in salvation holds the union and reconciliation 
of the human and the divine to be a completed fact 
in the humanization of the Son of God and as a 
permanent presence existing through the indwelling 
of the divine spirit in the hearts of God's children 
and in the congregation of the faithful, whom he 
consecrated as the temple of God. Accordingly, 

23 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

the pious mood is a constant intermingling of, or 
oscillation between, the feeling of peace and joy in 
the consciousness of salvation and alliance with 
God and the unstilled longing and hope for the 
future appearance and completion of the freedom 
and glory of the children of God. Thus Chris- 
tianity seeks to unite into a unity in itself the 
opposing forms of earlier religions; therein lies its 
great superiority of abundance and strength of re- 
ligious truth, but, also, its greater difficulty of 
mediating between these varied moments bound up 
in the nature of its principles into a unity theoreti- 
cally and practically perfect. It is this mediation 
which is the task of its historical development, in 
the course of which these opposites, even though 
it is not with their former exclusiveness, always 
do make their presence noticeable to some degree. 
Its history is for that reason so much richer, 
as its nature is more complicated than in any 
other religion; it has its contemplative thinkers, 
its world-weary mystics, its prophets of an ideal 
future and its battling heroes and men of world- 
governing energy — each single character is funda- 
mentally different from the others, and yet all are 
Christians, united by the common spirit of the 
religion of " God-humanity." overruling all in- 
dividual characteristics. I cannot enter into more 
detail of the history of Christianity at this point; 
yet I would show by the modern example of the 
classical thinkers and poets how the opposite funda- 

24 



The Essence of Religion 

mental tendencies, winding through the history of 
religion, may be recognized even in world-views 
which are not directly influenced by the Chris- 
tian church, — there, because they are grounded in 
human nature itself. I am thinking of Spinoza and 
Goethe on the one side, and of Kant and Schiller 
on the other. 

In Spinoza, the Indian and the Greek pantheism 
had a rebirth. For him, God is one with nature, 
the all-one being, which is at the basis of all phe- 
nomena, binding them all by the iron law of ne- 
cessity. In the circle of law-abiding occurrences, 
there are only causes, no purposes; these latter are 
merely the poetic addition of human imagination. 
Man, too, in so far as he is fettered in the slavery 
of the passions, is subject to the rigid mechanism 
of the laws of nature; but he becomes free from 
this miserable condition when he recognizes the 
unreasonableness of his passions and regards all 
external events in the light of eternity, that is, as 
fleeting phenomena in the moving All which obeys 
the eternal laws. To give up one's own small self 
in thoughtful viewing of the divine All and to bow 
in peaceful submission beneath the necessity of the 
whole, that is Spinoza's piety. This contemplative, 
selfless composure was what attracted Goethe to 
Spinoza; therein he found the wholesome medicine 
for his youthful, heated temperament. But Goethe 
transfigured the seriousness of Spinozistic thinking 
through esthetic joy in nature, of the ancient Greek 

25 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

manner of thinking, which saw the world filled with 
divine power and glory : 

**What were a God, who merely shoved without, 
And on his finger whirled the world about? 
'Tis his to move the world and hold 
Himself in nature, nature himself enfold. 
So that what in him lives and moves and is, 
Not his spirit nor his strength will miss." 

The thought of an extra-worldly God and of a 
God-forsaken world was not acceptable to nor ad- 
mitted by a poet, who, in gratitude and admiration, 
perceived the deed and government of God in the 
order of the world, in the beauty of nature, and in 
the inspirations of genius everywhere. No one has 
the right to declare this, Goethe's way of thinking, 
impious ; only this is correct, that it is one-sided and 
does not exhaust the nature of religion. But Goethe 
himself was aware of that, and, therefore, the verse 
quoted requires the following to complement it : 

"There is a universe within us, too. 
Hence, praiseworthy what the nations do; 
The best that each one has and knows, 
He names it God, his God; bestows 
Upon Him, heaven and earth above, 
His fear and where he can, his love." 

Here God is the name for that ideal which forms 
the inner world of our heart, but is far superior to 
all external reality; it is that to which, because we 
acknowledge it to be the best and the most valuable 
absolutely, we ascribe rulership over heaven and 
earth, the power to conquer the world. Therewith 
the justification of the motive of supermundane 

26 



The Essence of Religion 

religion and this basis in human nature is conceded, 
and the vaHdity of immanent rehgion put back into 
its proper perspective, which does not exclude the 
fact that for Goethe himself the preponderance was 
with the latter. 

The contrast to Spinoza is Kant, the philosopher 
of freedom, of the moral ideals and of the strict 
division of nature from spirit, world of the senses 
and moral law, Is and Ought. According to him, 
the belief in God is not to be based upon our experi- 
ence of the external world, but it is only demanded 
by our moral reason as a presupposition for the 
possibility of the future realization of the highest 
good, in which there will be reconciled the contra- 
diction of reason and the senses, of virtue and hap- 
piness, which are irreconcilable for us ; in other 
words, the belief in God serves the righteous as a 
guarantee of the hope that virtue will partake in the 
future of that happiness which it deserves, — a view 
against which, from the presuppositions of a strict 
Kantian idealism, some not unjustifiable objec- 
tions might be urged. Hence Schiller, Kant's great 
disciple, took what was permanently valuable out of 
his idealism, without adhering to the limitations 
which were present in Kant. 

According to Schiller, the belief in God is not 

merely a demand, an assumption in the interest of 

men who sought compensation for virtue through 

happiness ; rather, he warns against the " madness " 

which expects reward for the good by external 

happiness at any time; and yet there remains for 

2^ 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

him the behef in the ideal of the holy will, which 
highest thought weaves above time and space; this 
belief remains for him an immediate certainty, which 
the heart tells and without which, man would be 
robbed of all value. The ideal, however, should not 
only remain a supermundane (abstract) quantity, 
but it should be taken up in our will and become the 
inner power and joyousness of good volition and 
action. In this, Schiller finds the peculiarity of 
Christianity, in that it places free inclination in the 
stead of law; therein would be represented the 
" humanization of the sacred." Taking Kant's 
ideal as a starting-point, Schiller brought it down 
to actual human living, just as Goethe, starting 
from reality, elevated himself to the ideal. 

These are the two tendencies which wind through 
the history of religion and find oneness of princi- 
ple in Christianity, — which does not prevent some 
from placing the emphasis on the one side and others 
on the other, each according to his own peculiar 
nature. Instead of quarreling with one another 
about it, we ought rather to rejoice in the variety 
of religious characters as the living proof of the 
abundance of truth, of spirit, and of power, which 
is bound up with religion in general, and in Chris- 
tianity in particular. Whoever would understand 
the history of religion aright, let him hold fast to 
the beautiful words of Goethe, " The recognition 
of God, wherever and however He reveals Himself, 
that is real blessedness on earth." 

28 



II 



RELIGION AND ETHICS 



In the previous lecture, I have attempted to 
describe the essence of religion, without entering 
into that question which still plays so prominent a 
role in the text-books: Is religion a thing of the 
emotions or of the reason or of the will? In fact, 
that ought not to be a question any longer, since all 
psychologists are agreed that these three psychical 
functions or conditions cannot be so separated from 
one another that now one and now another alone is 
present; logically, we may differentiate them, but in 
the real life of every day, they are never differ- 
entiated, but always in each moment of full con- 
sciousness, they are so inseparably connected and so 
reciprocally active, that one without the other can 
not be understood. That a century ago, in its pas- 
sionate reaction against the shallow perspicuity and 
the frosty moralizing of the age of Enlightenment, 
Romanticism elevated the feelings as the one-and-all 
of religion (as of art) — ^historically, we can under- 
stand; but that does not permit us to withhold the 
judgment that it was a fatal error. For to it, must 

be ascribed the blame for the great and widespread 

29 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

confusion, thoughtlessness and anarchy in things 
rehgious, from which we are suffering to-day. 

Emotion, everywhere, is nothing but the coming 
into consciousness of a stimulation of the will 
through an idea; accordingly as it is positive or 
negative, attractive or repulsive in its effect on an ^ 
instinct, we become conscious of it as a feeling of 
an agreeable or disagreeable nature. If there can 
be no feeling in general without the stimulus of 
an idea, then it is natural that there can be no 
religious feeling without some kind of an idea of 
a corresponding object, some superhuman power, 
upon which man feels that he is dependent and 
to which he feels himself bound. Some idea of 
the divine is therefore the presupposition of the 
origin of a religious feeling. However, the mere 
idea of God is not religion, for religion is a matter 
of the whole man. One may have a mass of ideas 
about God, perhaps carry a whole system of church 
doctrines about in his head, and yet be an entirely 
irreligious person, and remain so as long as those 
ideas are merely matter of knowledge and find no 
echo in the will, so long as they do not release 
religious feelings. The presence of religious feel- 
ings is an evidence that a man does not only know 
about God, but that he is moved by it as to his will 
and follows its decisions ; that he has God not only 
in his head, but also in his heart. " Would you 
have him as your own, then feel the God you 
think." The feelings released by the ideas do not 

30 



Religion and Ethics 

remain for themselves as conditions of rest, but 
they become impelHng powers for the will which 
sets the will in motion in the direction indicated by 
the content of the ideas. Directly the will reacts 
inwardly upon the God-idea, in that it enters into 
a corresponding relation with God, affirms and 
acknowledges its attachment to the divine will, and 
makes its decisions accordingly, surrendering itself 
to Him in obedience. This movement of the will, 
at first inward, externalizes itself in corresponding 
action in '^ the service of God." This takes place 
in two-fold fashion: partly in unmediated relation 
to God as service of God in the narrower (cultish) 
sense, partly in mediate relation, through the moral 
action among men and things of the world which 
correspond with the divine will. 

Naturally there can be no such thing as a 'direct 
action upon God in the strict sense of the word, 
hence the activities of the cult-service of God have 
but a symbolic meaning; they are the symbolic- 
representative expression of the inner tendency of 
the will to God, the immediate expression of the 
pious feelings and, at the same time, the means of 
stimulating, energizing and imparting those feel- 
ings. The real service of God is actually only 
moral activity in the world, in so far as the pious 
soul regards It as the fulfillment of tasks set him by 
God, as a service for the cause of God, for the 
realization of the divine purposes in the world. 
lYet it must be remembered that this differentiation 

31 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

of ours between actual and inactual, real and sym- 
bolic-cultish service of God, is not yet clear to the 
naive religious consciousness; the latter does not 
think of mere symbolism in the performances of 
the cult-activities, but thinks that he is performing 
a direct service to his god thereby, that it is an 
agreeable and desired deed, whereby the favor of the 
god is won and a return deed is bought. Since this 
direct cult-act for the god disregards the moral pur- 
poses of society, and does not come into contact 
with them, or if it does, it is a mere matter of 
chance and of secondary import, it is well possible 
and happens frequently that a conflict arises be- 
tween the cult-service of God and the moral pur- 
poses of society. Then, instead of being the most 
powerful motive of morality, religion becomes its 
gravest obstacle. 

The ultimate source of this evil lies in the child- 
ish, senseless mode of thought of primitive religion, 
which, without further ado, places the relation to 
God on a level with the relation to a powerful 
man, — that is, ascribes to him a selfish will, peculiar 
needs and self-seeking wishes; whereas the divine 
will is perfectly good, so that its object is absolutely 
one with the general highest good. The same 
lowering of God to the finite is also the source of 
the conflicts between religious ideas and profane 
knowledge ; for if God is conceived as an individual 
Being, acting alongside of others, differing from 
other finite beings merely in degree of power, then 

3a 



Religion and Ethics 

peculiar finite activities will be ascribed to Him 
which collide with those of other finite causes, hence 
breaking through and nullifying the causal con- 
nection of the whole of the world-order ; whereas, in 
reality, God is the infinite power and wisdom : He is 
the eternal basis of the reasonable order of the 
world and the guarantee of the knowledge of it for 
our thinking. 

Therewith, we have arrived at the important 
question : What is the relation of religion to ethics 
and to science? This question is of utmost impor- 
tance for a proper judgment of present and past 
religion. Therefore, we will enter more deeply 
into it. 

Religion and ethics — what a much vexed sub- 
ject of our day! Many there are who think that 
their origins were distinct, that they differed totally ; 
that religion originally had no connection with 
morals, but that the latter had been something 
extraneous added subsequently as an accidental to 
the former; that, therefore, they do not belong es- 
sentially together, that they may well be able to go 
farther apart than they are now, and that such a 
separation would better serve the interest of ethics. 
On the other hand, there are those who are con- 
vinced that the separation not only contradicts all 
past history but also their own nature, and that it 
would be productive of the gravest disaster to both. 
At the outset, let us test these two opposing opinions 
in the light of the facts offered by history. 

33 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

On one point there can be not the slightest doubt ; 
the notion that rehgion and ethics were originally 
entirely separate and distinct is false, — an almost 
inconceivable error. Among the serious research- 
students working over ancient periods, it is gen- 
erally conceded, to-day, that the moral conduct of 
men had its beginning in the religious faith and 
religious rites. The feeling of allegiance to the one 
common deity of a certain social group was the 
original tie of all moral solidarity and community, 
that was the source of social order and morality of 
mankind. The sanctity of the family emanated 
from the cult-service. The hearth was the home- 
altar, the house-father was the priest, who acted for 
the family in performing the service to the house- 
hold-deity. In the tribe that was the position of 
the oldest or the tribe-chief; with a nation it was 
the national king. They were the representatives 
of the divinely-founded unity of the tribe or nation, 
the mouthpieces of the divine will, and the mediators 
between the god and men ; hence, even Homer calls 
them " Zeus-born." So, too, all legal procedure in 
the world of the ancient peoples was sanctified by 
religion ; everywhere the written and the unwritten 
law was traced back to divine establishment and 
revelation. 

Not only the law of Moses, but among the 
Indians, the law of Manu, among the Persians, that 
of Zarathustra, among the Greeks, that of Lycurgus, 
among the Romans, that of Numa — all of them 

34 



Religion and Ethics 

were looked upon as divinely given and sanctioned 
by divine oracles. Here, as everywhere, the high- 
est source of human authority and order is deity 
itself. Because the god founded and established 
all rights and laws, it was logically concluded that 
the god was the protector of all rights and the 
avenger of all injustice. From of old, this thought 
has been effective as a mighty educational power 
among men. The human judge performs his offices 
as a commission of the god judging, and where his 
power proves to be too weak it is supplemented by 
the divine Nemesis and Dike and the Erinnyes, the 
fearful daughters of Night. All turning-points in 
the life of the individual and the political commu- 
nity were also sanctified by religion in the beginning. 
Thus, at the birth of a child, it was placed under 
the protecting care of the household-deity with 
solemn ceremony; the attainment of majority, the 
marriage, the entombment, — they are celebrated by 
festal rites established by the god. 'And then, the 
best and most precious things which the awakening 
spirit of man brought forth, his arts, were the 
children of religion; they erected the wondrous 
structure of the temple for the gods, they decorated 
its halls with noble statuary and precious dedicatory 
gifts. The lively antiphonal songs and circle- 
dancing at the vintage-feast of Dionysus gave rise 
to the classic drama, the overwhelming tragedies, 
and the witty comedies of the Greeks. 

But no less the earnest business and events in the 

35 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

political life of the people, the council and judicial 
meetings, the departure for war, the founding of 
colonies — all of this, too, eventuated according to 
the oracular speech of the god and in trust of his 
protection. The returning army, victorious, dedi- 
cated its trophies as a tribute of thanks to the god. 
So the whole life of the individual and of the nation 
was encompassed and permeated, ordered and regu- 
lated, elevated and sanctified by their religion. It 
was not, as it is with us, a thing apart for itself ; it 
was the soul of the social life, the bond of political 
community, the impulse to self-sacrificing patriot- 
ism, the education to a higher culture, the sanctifi- 
cation and the crown of life. There was not as 
yet any distinction between church and state; the 
temporal and the religious life of the people was an 
undivided unity, regulated by the same laws and 
serving the same purposes : the honor of the national 
god who was wrapped up in the perpetuation and 
best welfare of the whole nation. 

Naturally, it could not remain so long. It is a 
peculiarity of religion that it keeps a tight hold on 
traditional ideas and ceremonies with great tenacity. 
That is its strength, for thereby, the fleeting and 
changeable life of the children of men gains hold, 
permanence and firmness. But that which is in 
truth its strength is at the same time its weakness. 
For the forward and upward striving human spirit 
cannot possibly remain fettered by the leading- 
strings of traditions and commandments. iVVhen 

36 



Religion and Ethics 

man opens his eyes and looks about him in the 
world, he finds that there are many things quite 
different from what he had been led to think by 
the pious traditions of his fathers handed down from 
generation to generation. The work of culture in 
society becomes more complicated, the activity of 
the individual becomes more independent and more 
intensive, and so both break loose from the fixed 
traditional forms of religion. No longer is the 
custom and the faith of the parent, but man's own 
opinion and his wish as an individual, is declared 
to be the measure of all things. At first, this is 
rather a loss than a gain, but it is a necessary step 
on the pathway of the evolution of the human spirit, 
as in the period of the Sophists, and again in the 
modern age of Enlightenment (even as early as the 
Renaissance). With this release of the thinking 
and the willing of the individual from the traditional 
faith and custom, religion and morality enter into 
that opposition to one another which leads to strug- 
gle. We cannot take up each of the phases of that 
combat in detail; we are still in the midst of the 
fray and there is no sign to tell us when it will 
end. 

Some think that the combat could soon be brought 
to a close if every one would only recognize that 
the two had nothing to do with one another; on 
Sundays, religion might have its say for a brief 
hour, but beyond that ethics and science go their 
own way, heedless of religion. Yes, there are some 

37 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

who go further and maintain that morals will not 
improve until ethics has freed itself completely from 
religion, for the influence exerted by religion upon 
morals is bad. Religion, so these men say, makes 
man unfree, in that it subordinates man to the 
strange will of God, robs man of his own free self- 
determination upon which all moral dignity rests. 
By the employment of the motives of fear and hope 
in the insistence upon its commandments, religion 
degrades morals and makes them unclean, for 
action, which has regard for reward and punish- 
ment, is a pseudo-morality. 

Furthermore, instead of urging man to depend 
upon his own moral power and effort, religion re- 
fers him to divine grace and providence, which will 
do all things for him ; religion even denies freedom 
to man and his power for good, and thus paralyzes 
all his energies, making him discouraged and in- 
dolent, cowardly and unfit for the struggle for exist- 
ence. The more so since religion ever points to 
a realm beyond, and represents this earthly exist- 
ence as vain and valueless, as a valley of sorrows 
which is not worth the concern of men; thus, re- 
ligion embitters earthly toil for men and turns 
them against their immediate tasks and duties, mak- 
ing them unfit inhabitants of the earth. Finally, 
as a church, religion has fixed its ordinances, in 
which it has set down what shall be true and good 
forever; therewith man is prevented from striving 
for knowledge of the truth, from the exercise of 

38 



Religion and Ethics 

independent testing and judging, from the attain- 
ment of a firm personal conviction, — killing man's 
sense of truth, making him either deceitful or 
ignorant; and while one church reviles the other, 
religion foments the worst of discord, all misfor- 
tunes and evils which the nations are suffering. 

What shall we say to all of this ? First of all, I 
think we will take heed not to answer the uncalled- 
for exaggerations of our opponents with like ex- 
aggeration. iWe do not wish to maintain that, 
among those estranged from religion or who think 
they are estranged from it, there are not moral 
men; that would be a contradiction of experience. 
It cannot be denied that even among those who are 
not associated with any positive religion there are 
moral characters deserving of high respect, — men 
distinguished by their conscientiousness, their in- 
dustry in their calling, and their eagerness for the 
public welfare. But whence have these men ob- 
tained their moral principles and their moral atti- 
tude? Are they not the fruits of an education 
which from youth impressed the good as the abso- 
lutely valuable upon them and caused them to love 
it, wakened their sense of duty and molded their 
consciences ? This education was given to them by 
the moral community in which they grew up, and 
the moral spirit which pervaded it rested upon its 
religious world-view. In the consciousness of single 
individuals, this close interweaving of the moral 
and religious convictions may be somewht>t dark- 

39 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

ened, nevertheless it remains an indisputable fact 
that the common moral consciousness of human 
society rests on its religious beliefs, standing and 
falling with them. There is no disputing the les- 
sons taught by the experience of history ; in ages of 
religious decadence, of faithlessness and skepticism, 
the moral consciousness of a nation usually sinks 
and degenerates into confusion and disintegration. 
How could it be otherwise? Where else could the 
moral consciousness acquire the faith in the abso- 
luteness of duty and the sanctity of the moral ideal, 
if not from the faith in an absolute eternal will of 
the good superior to the arbitrariness of men, that 
is from God? Only in a consciousness of the 
allegiance to the divine will, which is the common 
cause as it is the common law and goal of the 
lives of men, can men feel themselves bound one to 
the other by the irrefragible moral bond of mutual 
obligation. Therefore, everywhere it is the relig- 
ious belief of peoples in which the stoutest roots of 
the consciousness of duty are imbedded; the relig- 
ious belief supports the consciousness of the indi- 
vidual and the community and keeps it alive, and 
it gives perpetual guarantee of the subordination of 
the individual members to the order of the whole 
and their willing surrender to the purpose of the 
whole. 

How about those charges brought against relig- 
ion in regard to its influence upon morals? As a 
prelimin^try, it must be said that the essential differ- 

40 



Religion and Ethics 

ence between religion itself and its positive church 
forms, doctrines, ordinances and customs, is over- 
looked. We ought to be permitted to take it for 
granted that any one who talks about these mat- 
ters knows that these things are not religion, but 
merely its imperfect presentation-forms, coverings 
and shells (Kant, ''vehicles"), which are con- 
ditioned by time and changeable in time. And no 
less ought we to presuppose a knowledge of the 
fact concerning the law of evolution, under which 
we are accustomed to consider all physical and his- 
torical life to-day, namely, that it holds good in 
religion as well as in morals. Both of them were 
given at the beginning not as completed entities, but 
were compelled to work their way out of crude 
beginnings gradually, to rise from attachment to 
the senses to freedom of the spirit. Through 
arduous effort and education of generation after 
generation, reason must gradually be brought to 
consciousness in men and finally to mastery over 
them. In this educative process to reasonableness 
the race, as well as the individual, must pass through 
certain different stages, and every educator knows 
that the same demands cannot be made in the lower 
stages as in the higher. In the child-stage of 
development, the good cannot be known by a rea- 
soned judgment, and cannot be desired nor done 
through a voluntary self-determination, but to each 
one there comes an external command which de- 
mands the subordination of the personal will undo: 

41 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

the commanding will. It is perfectly natural that 
this stage of development corresponds to the theo- 
cratic form of religion and morals, that is, the 
idea that the good is a command to men from a 
strange and external will of God, the supermundane 
Lord. In this form of religious consciousness, man 
does bear a relation to God which is as unfree 
as that of a slave to his master, or of a minor child 
to its tutor. Just as this form of consciousness 
in the lower stage of development is inevitable, 
so little should it remain permanent. When the 
time was ripe, the discipline of the law was re- 
moved and mankind called to freedom as the full- 
grown sons of God. That was the new conscious- 
ness of God's children brought by; Christianity. 
Paul says : 

^' Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith 
Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled 
again with the yoke of bondage.'^ !(Gal. v, i). 

But this freedom of Christians is not equivalent 
to license; it stands just as far above the heathen 
lack of law and unbridled freedom as it does above 
Jewish legality and unfreedom. It is the freedom 
in God, in allegiance of conscience to Him, which 
makes free from the compulsion of the world and 
does at the same time unite man to men in love ; as 
Luther says of "the freedom of Christian men," 
that they are master of all things in faith and ser- 
vant of all in love. That, too, is the fundamental 
thought of the classical philosophy of idealism, 

42 



Religion and Ethics 



which Schiller has expressed in the well-known 
verse : 

Absorb the divine into your will, 
From its world-throne, 'twill descend, 
Of itself the yawning chasm will fill 
The fearful object take an end. 
The strong links of the law can bind 
The slavish sense disdaining them, alone, 
With the opposition of men vanishes 
Too, the majesty of God. 

Therewith the reproach of impure motives at- 
tributed to religious morals is also removed. In 
the condition of immaturity, when the good still 
appears as the external command of a strange will, 
the motives of fear and hope are naturally indis- 
pensable. But in the measure with which man 
grows out of the condition of immaturity and lifts 
himself to the state of childship of God, those 
motives lose their meaning ; in their stead enters the 
joyous surrender to the good as God's purpose, 
which is at the same time our own reasonable pur- 
pose of life, and there enters the reasonable service 
of God, which is, at the same time, the service of 
men in unselfish love, mm^'^ - ^.. 

Concerning the further effects of the belief in 
providence, does it actually make men indolent? 
Experience hardly confirms it as a fact. The truly 
pious belief in providence was ever a prop for 
morally striving and struggling men, and a prop 
with which it would be difficult to dispense. How 
could man endure in the struggle and effort for the 
good if he did not believe that his goal was attain- 

43 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

able, if he dared not hope for the future victory 
of the right over wrong, of love over selfishness, 
of truth over falsehood? But how can man cher- 
ish such hopes if he builds solely upon his own 
weak powers, and regards only external experience, 
in which so often evil triumphs over good? When 
man believes in God as the Lord of the world and 
the director of the world's course, then he knows 
of a surety that all things in the world must serve 
the purposes of God and must cooperate toward the 
victory of the good. For the truly pious, the grace 
of God is anything but a pillow of idleness for 
moral sloth. Consider the great heroes of the his- 
tory of religion: a Paul, a Luther, a Calvin, a 
Knox — were they idle men or were they not rather 
most powerful heroes of active work? It was not 
so despite the fact, but because they felt themselves 
to be instruments of divine grace, driven and borne 
by the divine spirit, whose power they knew to be 
strong in their weakness. 

The hope of a world beyond, the world-weariness, 
the longing for heaven, — ^must they not paralyze 
all moral activity? Well, yes, that did appear at 
times, for example, at the close of the ancient world 
and again in the medieval world like some epidemic 
of disease, and it is to be judged in the same fashion 
as that sentimental world-woe which attacks some 
people in their youthful stages of development. 
But such conditions are diseases of youth, which 
have their time and then pass off. So, too, the 

44 



Religion and Ethics 

Christian believers did not rest at the stage of 
world-denial, but conquered it by the inner force of 
their faith. We pray : " Thy kingdom come ; Thy 
will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.'^ We hope 
for its coming upon this, our earth; we hope that 
this scene of our sorrows and joys, our labor and 
toil, will become consecrated to a realm of the good, 
where right will become might, and peace embrace 
justice. 

Naturally, even with this hope, there remains an 
excess of the other-worldliness of the ideal, which 
can never be absorbed completely by the world of 
our experience here below. That lies in the nature 
of the matter, in the nature of the ideal, and in the 
need of the human spirit. We cannot hide from 
our sight the fact that despite all our labor and our 
striving the ultimate goal is something that we can 
never reach. " So long as man strives, he errs.** 
The ideal constantly recedes before him, vanishing 
ever into higher and greater distance. And yet 
there is a sanctuary of refuge, where we can par- 
take of the eternal as something present, — it is pious 
devotion, whether it be in the quiet of our own 
chamber or in the common service with the whole 
congregation. There we rise somewhat to the view- 
point of God and look upon things of time under 
the aspect of eternity. There that which will be, 
now is ; the chasm between what is and what ought 
to be, which never can or should disappear for those 
striving after morality, is bridged by the feeling of 

45 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

eternity in worship. With the eye of God, we look 
upon life which is ever becoming and striving and 
ever imperfect, and we see its great gaps filled and 
see its battles ended, we see the ideal as an inner 
vision and feel it as a living presence. In such wise, 
religion is not only the firm root of the power of the 
moral, but also its crown and its completion; the 
myriad bits of earth it gathers up into a complete 
entity ; it lifts us out of the sorrows and the strug- 
gles of time to eternity. 



46 



Ill 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE 



Vexed as is the problem of the relation of ethics 
to religion of which we spoke in the last lecture 
more so is the problem of the relation of religion 
to science. In order to have a clear idea wherein 
the cause of the various conflicts between religion 
and science lies, and whether a solution may be 
hoped for, we must first see how that originates 
which in religion forms the teachable matter of 
tradition, the content of the ideas of faith. At the 
outset, religion, as the psychical determination of 
life of the whole man, must be differentiated from 
the doctrines of religion as content of knowledge. 
That the latter does form a part of religion is a con- 
clusion which follows from what was said in the 
last lecture concerning the necessary coincidence of 
ideas with feelings and activities of the will in re- 
ligion ; for the very reason that the religious idea is 
an essential moment, but only one moment, in the 
whole of the religious life of the soul, there has 
also been said that the religious idea and doctrine 
must not be substituted for religion itself. Re- 
ligious ideas may be subjected to the most thorough- 

47 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

going changes, and yet religion may remain essen- 
tially the fundamental of the soul. From which, it 
follows, that conflicts between profane knowledge 
and the traditional religious ideas raise no question 
of the right of religion itself, but they are merely 
indications that the former mode of thought is no 
longer the adequate form for the religious life and 
therefore stands in need of more or less emendation 
or renovation. 

Science forms the things it knows by means of 
the thinking of reason; the more objective and 
sober the grasp of a subject by the thinker, the less 
play he grants to his subjective prejudices, ten- 
dencies and moods, the more nearly he will ap- 
proach to the truth. In religion, however, at first 
not at all, and later merely in part and with condi- 
tions, does reason shape the doctrine; but, from 
the beginning, it is the poetic fancy in which the 
elements of a doctrine, the religious myths, legends 
and sayings, have their origin. 

This difference in origins is naturally the source 
of a very great difference between the doctrines of 
religion and science. Religious fantasy never makes 
its poetry voluntarily, as is the case with the poet, 
who does his work with conscious art. The origi- 
nal legends are rather the products of the un- 
conscious poetic activity of the popular spirit; they 
arise from the conflux of the pictures present in the 
souls of the many; one cannot say where or how. 
Neither does the religious fantasy draw its poetry 

48 



Religion and Science 

from nowhere, but rather attaches it to actual ex- 
periences, to phenomena of nature and the events 
of history, to such experiences as released similar 
religious feelings in the souls of the many. Exam- 
ples ? Above all, there is that universal poem of the 
fantasy, which is still found in our day wherever 
there are children or primitive peoples, that ascrib- 
ing of a soul to all the things of nature which we 
usually term " animism." Of itself, animism is not 
religion, but is its foundation ; one might call it the 
most elementary popular metaphysics. Naturally, 
among the phenomena of nature, those must have 
been the most impressive in every age which w^ere 
of most incisive importance for the preservation of 
life, such as the dying of the nature world in the 
autumn and its reawakening in the spring. Since 
fantasy saw living souls, spirits and gods every- 
where present in nature, this death and resurrection 
of nature must have been the fate of the deities 
whose souls dwelt therein. 

But it is the way of the poetizing fantasy that an 
event which is constantly occurring or ever-recur- 
ring, is summed up in one story of the past. Thus, 
the primitive myths of the death and resurrection of 
the gods of nature and of fruitfulness — Osiris, 
Adonis, Attis, Dionysos, Persephone and the like, — 
had their beginning. Out of such a carrying-back 
of a continually returning event in nature into a 
one-time story of the past, the Babylonian myth of 
Creation originated, which is closely related to that 

49 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

of the Bible as we shall see more in detail later; a 
spring song, in which the annual victory of the sun- 
god over the powers of Chaos was celebrated, served 
the fantasy of a seer or priest as a model for the 
poetic presentation of the original emergence of an 
ordered universe out of the chaos of the first begin- 
ning. It is likely that the Flood-myth originated 
in such wise also, the frequently recurring floods of 
Mesopotamia being consolidated in one epic of a 
one-time catastrophe of the early days of the world. 
Soon other questions force themselves upon the at- 
tention of men: Whence comes all the evil of the 
world? Whence all the sicknesses and cares of 
human life? Why must women bear with pain, and 
men labor in the sweat of their foreheads? The 
answer to these questions reads : The blame for all 
of this rests upon the curiosity of woman and the 
weakness of man — Eve and Adam, Pandora and 
Epimetheus-Prometheus. 

Out of these early sagas of nature myths and the 
recollections of historic experiences of primitive 
tribes, there arise then the epics or songs of heroes, 
in which the oldest form of historical tradition is to 
be seen. When the single tribes unite into one 
people, their tribal deities combine into a national 
system of gods, in which the individual gods are 
genealogically combined, differentiated according 
to rank and occupation, and subordinated to one 
supreme national god, whereas the local gods and 
the gods of the smaller tribes are lowered to the 

50 



Religion and Science 

rank of demi-gods or human heroes o£ the early 
days. The epic heroes are the divine ancestors, to 
whom the tribes and f amihes trace back their origin, 
and whose deeds and fates partly mirror the his- 
torical memories of the tribes. Here is where the 
cult-myths belong in which priestly families trace 
back the history of their sanctuary to a divine 
establishment and revelation; such are the Python- 
Apollo myth of Delphi, the Demeter-Kore myth of 
Eleusis, the Hebrew myths of the appearance of 
God at Hebron, Bethel and the like. An important 
epoch in the history of culture, the transition from 
human to animal sacrifices, is described in the stories 
which tell of non-fulfillment by divine intervention, 
in the instances of Isaac and Iphigenia. 

Most important, however, are the legends which 
attach themselves to the epoch-making personalities 
of the history of religions, the prophets and re- 
formers, the so-called founders of religions. Be- 
cause the words from them were looked upon as the 
truth by the congregation, faith made of these men 
messengers, mediators and even incarnations of 
the god. Their biographies are adorned with 
wonder-tales, the symbols of the truth of direct in- 
spiration by revelation, as in the cases of Moses, 
Zarathustra, Pythagoras, Buddha, Jesus. With 
the last-named, the origin of their mortal persons 
is soon traced back to the divine, and this divine 
nature soon partakes of the god, without, in any 
way, attempting to deny the man of the earth. For 

51 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

popular legend there lay no difficulty therein to deify 
the human and to humanize the divine, — for, had 
not that been the theme of all the epic hero-myths 
of previous periods. The difficulty first became 
apparent when the understanding approached the 
naive myth with the question: How is one to 
think in such case, could an actual god become a 
man or could an actual man become a god? 
Christianity has been busy with this question for 
more than half a millenium, and in the end it 
has not been solved but simply set down and fixed 
in the contradictory form of the dogma. Dogma 
is therefore not, as is so often thought, the 
arbitrary invention of the theologian. Dogma is 
the attempt of the reflecting understanding to 
state the content of the pious legend in conceptual 
formula. " 

At all times the fundamental idea, the peculiar 
character of any religion, is the heart of its central 
dogma; the idea contained is attached to historical 
or legendary events and visualized through the per- 
son of the prophetic founder, who naturally under- 
goes idealization for that purpose. Thus, for the 
Persians, Zarathustra is the embodiment of his 
religion of struggle and the hope of a future vic- 
torious rulership of God ; for the Buddhists, Gautama 
Buddha is the embodiment of salvation through 
knowledge, self-abnegation and benevolence ; for 
the Christian, Jesus is the embodiment of the 
child-of-God idea, salvation from the world and 

52 



Religion and Science 

reconciliation with God in faith and love. To this 
central dogma, usually, there become attached doc- 
trines concerning the beginning and the end of the 
world, the materials for which are found partly in 
ancient myths and partly in philosophical specula- 
tions. Finally, all of this is woven with great art 
into one complete theological doctrinal system 
which describes an all-encompassing picture of the 
world, Here and Beyond, history (legend) and 
metaphysics and morals ; then its authoritative valid- 
ity for the faith of the church is fixed and firm until 
a contradiction with the knowledge of progressing 
culture is recognized. 
; - ■- \ 

The opposition to ecclesiastical doctrines of faith 
originated with the natural sciences. In the six- 
teenth century, when Copernicus presented his 
teaching that the earth does not stand still, but, with 
the other planets revolves about the sun, Melanch- 
thon regarded this teaching as gross error, and de- 
manded its suppression by the superior authorities; 
he recognized its contradiction of the biblical report 
of Creation and the biblical world-picture with all 
the far-reaching consequences more keenly than did 
the later theologians, who have learned to accept 
the Copemican-view of the world in the main, but 
close their eyes to the separate logical consequences. 
What Copernicus had begun, physics and mathe- 
matics continued in the seventeenth and eighteenth' 
centuries by their habit of exact logical and causal 

53 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

thinking, and thus the conviction of the invariable- 
ness of eventuation is formed. Spinoza first made 
this thought the basis of a philosophic view of the 
world, and he even drew the conclusion therefrom 
that miracles, in the actual sense of supernatural 
nature-phenomena, were not possible, because they 
would indicate a cessation of the order of the world, 
which is one with the eternal and unchangeable 
nature of God. Finally, the nineteenth century 
came with the theory of evolution, which Lamarck 
prepared and Darwin carried out to its victorious 
completion, according to which all higher species of 
earthly living beings, including men, developed 
from certain simple ground-forms through gradual 
and naturally-conditioned changes. But what be- 
comes of the Biblical Paradise? of the Creation? of 
the perfect condition of man at the beginning? In- 
stead of such a peaceful idyll there is put a semi- 
animal beginning of our race with all the horrors 
of the hard struggle for existence, with the slow and 
laborious elevation to human culture; nevertheless 
it is a rise from the depths of animal nature to 
spiritual freedom, and, in the end, that is a more 
sublime thought than the church-doctrine of a fall 
from some mythical height to an abysmal depth of 
depravity. 

For the science of history, the thought of evolution 
also became important. In history, man learned to 
regard more closely the gradual becoming of the 
higher out of the lower, without any leaps or abrupt 

54 



Religion and Science 

new-beginnings ; in the stead of divine miraculous 
deeds, there entered the natural relation of the 
doings of individuals under the conditioning in- 
fluences of the social conditions of the time and 
their environment. It was recognized that the 
greatest heroes and innovating spirits were always 
children of their period and in some measure 
hemmed by its limitations, that everything temporal 
was temporally limited and relative. These princi- 
ples were then applied to biblical history and led to 
a complete overturning of traditional views. The 
examination of the biblical writings after the criti- 
cal method usually applied to profane writings was 
begun and their divergencies and partial contradic- 
tions in the separate traditions as well as in the total 
conception of Christianity was regarded. Whatever 
was human and conditioned by the history of the 
time in the utterances and the teachings of the bibli- 
cal authors, was in all places so clear, that the faith 
in the infallibility and direct divine inspiration of 
the words of the Bible could no longer be main- 
tained. Finally, the view widened from the biblical 
field to that of the whole history of religion. Here 
the most remarkable parallels between biblical and 
heathen legends soon became apparent, — parallels 
which partly seemed to point to a dependence of 
the former on the latter. For instance, the similari- 
ties existing between the biblical and the Babylon 
Creation and Flood stories, between the laws of 
Moses and those of Hammurabi, between the 

55 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

Jewish and the Persian doctrines of angels and 
devils, of resurrection and world-judgment, be- 
tween the evangelic and the Buddhistic miracle- 
legends. Therewith the critical analysis of the 
traditional doctrines of faith, which had begun with 
externals (creation and world-picture), finally ar- 
rived at the central point: even the doctrines of 
Christ and of salvation were questioned, disrobed at 
least of their unique miraculous character, in place 
of which here, too, conditioning by time and his- 
tory were substituted. So the fight between modern 
science and ancient doctrines of faith was taken up 
along the whole line; and with greatest vigor, it is 
still being fought. We are standing in the midst 
of it. How will it end ? Will they prove to be in 
the right who see the end of religion in the victory 
of science? Or will the rigid defenders of the tra- 
ditional faith prove right in their conviction that 
faith will emerge from the present crisis unharmed 
and unchanged? Or, will neither combatant main- 
tain his ground ? 

This much is certain: Church-rulership over 
science to-day, or in the future, is out of the ques- 
tion. Such rulership was possible only as long as 
the Church ruled the entire spiritual life of society, 
and, as in the Middle Ages, an independent tem- 
poral science had not yet arisen. Later, relations 
were reversed; in the age of enlightenment when 
the human spirit became conscious of its rights and 
its capacity for independent thought untrammeled 

56 



Religion and Science 

by authority, then science made the bold claim to 
rule over religion. Emancipated reason arranged 
its " natural religion/' made up of abstract concep- 
tions, and whatever of historical religion did not fit 
into this free construction of reflection was simply 
thrown aside as meaningless and worthless. This 
was the equally-one-sided companion-piece to the 
religion of authority preceding, and for that reason 
it could not be permanent. It is clear that science, 
as little as art, can make religion, for both are a his- 
torically-given and self-developing life, which can 
no more be created than it can be destroyed by 
argumentation. And the purpose of religion, as of 
art, lies as little in the increase of our knowledge of 
the world ; but religion seeks to put our hearts into 
right relation to God, and therewith to give us the 
right view-point for judgment of the world and of 
life according to its relation to our emotion and 
volition. For that reason the intellectualism of the 
age of enlightenment was mistaken. Against the 
enlightenment such men as Rousseau, Hamann, 
Herder, Schleiermacher and others rose up; this 
was the new tendency which is generally termed 
" Romanticism,'' — a passionate protest against the 
supremacy of the understanding in favor of the 
rights of the heart and the fantasy, the emotions, 
the notions and the moods of men. According to 
Schleiermacher, religion is a feeling of the infinite 
in the finite, or a feeling of absolute dependence; 
each religion is equally true in so far as it is a mat- 

S7 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

ter of the feelings, but with the truth of science it 
has nothing whatsoever to do. 

It is this notion which governs in the New-roman- 
ticism of to-day. Rehgion and science, so men say, 
should stand peaceably one alongside the other and 
sufifer each to go its way in peace, one not caring 
about the other. Science should confine itself to 
the knowledge of the causal connection of finite 
things and events, while religion has nothing to do 
with knowledge either of God or the world, but 
only with the experiences of the spirit, our inner 
life, which are completely independent of the truths 
of science and have their value in themselves, in 
the benevolent and consolatory feelings which give 
us an inner satisfaction irrespective of all that may 
be said about its "truth.'' 

Nowadays that seems a welcome way of escape 
for many, an easy peace-proposition in the bitter 
struggle between religion and science. Pity it is, 
that with this division of understanding and heart, 
the opposition is not reduced, but simply hidden and 
laid over. Let us be honest and try to make clear 
to ourselves the actual condition of things. What 
does science want? Simply to know certain sep- 
arate relations here and there in the different realms ? 
Will science ever give up the attempt to move from 
single relations to others until it has completed a 
world-picture which shall embrace all? Certainly 
not. But, suppose science arrives at a mechanical 
materialism as the explanation of the world which 

5S 



Religion and Science 

robs the faith in God of all meaning except such as 
is contained in Feuerbach's illusion theory. Can 
religion rest satisfied with that? Can the religious 
feelings maintain their value if they are directed to- 
ward an object which has been recognized as a sub- 
jective creation of illusion? In fact, there can be 
no doubt, all religion would then be at an end; its 
experiences and emotions would soon cease if the 
fundamental, the truth of the idea of God, were 
withdrawn and they were left suspended in the air, 
so to speak. Then religion cannot peacefully stand 
alongside a scientific view of the world which is 
atheistic; religion could not suffer it without giving 
itself up. But let us take another view of the 
matter. 

The naive mode of religious thinking prefers to 
attach its pious feelings to the wonder-legends and 
therefore, demands that, for the sake of the value of 
those feelings, the miracle should have the validity 
of truth, and science should acknowledge it to be 
such. Will science, for the sake of sweet peace, 
quietly submit to such a demand ? It is well known 
that science refuses to do so, and regarded from the 
standpoint of science, justifiably so, for this demand 
is nothing short of a command to give up the com- 
plete lawfulness of all becoming in time and space, 
which IS the fundamental presupposition, the conditio 
sine qua non, of all scientific thinking and know- 
ing in the world. Science cannot yield this ground, 
cannot make this concession to the religious way of 

59 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

thinking, without yielding itself up. In truth, the 
matter stands thus: The compromise between re- 
ligion and science, on the basis of a mutual ignoring 
and indulgence, is deceptive and untenable, however 
acceptable it may seem to the superficial eye. Such 
cheap subterfuges will not stand permanently; they 
are merely pillows upon which the ease-loving and 
lazy-thinking seek to rest, hence they are not fitting 
for an earnest and honest science of religion. The 
latter cannot thrust aside the task of seeking a posi- 
tive mediation between religion and science, a rela- 
tion of honest mutual recognition, respect and 
furtherance. 

The God-idea itself is the guarantee that it must 
be possible to find such a relation between the two, 
in so far as that idea involves the unity of world- 
cause and world-purpose, the final of all knowing 
and willing. Just as that idea for morals contains 
the deepest foundation and perfection of duty and 
right volition, so for science, it contains the final 
ground and the finishing goal of all knowledge of 
the world. That is the decisive point, concerning 
which there must be no misunderstanding. As has 
been said, the prestipposition of science is the un- 
deviating lawfulness of all the world phenomena 
and the steady evolution of all life in nature and 
history. Upon what is this presupposition of law- 
fulness based ? On proofs of any sort ? Not at all ; 
it is the basis of all the proofs of inductive research 
and, therefore, cannot itself be proved. Its first 

6q 



Religion and Science 

beginning is a hypothesis of faith, a postulate of 
reason which would know the world in logically 
ordered thinking and, therefore, must necessarily 
assume that the world is a reasonably ordered 
whole, a lawful connection of being and becoming. 
What else is involved in this assumption of faith 
which reason necessarily makes? If the world is 
a law-abiding arrangement of interacting finite 
forces, the question arises at once: Whence comes 
this order? Inasmuch as it governs the multitudi- 
nous number of finite beings and powers, or joins 
them into a unity or cosmos, it cannot possibly have 
its origin in the many and the finite ; it must rather 
be the product of a uniform cause which the multi- 
plicity presupposes, one prime power underlying all 
finite powers as the infinite source of power or 
omnipotence; yet, at the same time, it must be a 
reasonable principle, otherwise there could not possi- 
bly be a reasonable order in its activity in the single 
powers: hence, underlying the reasonable, ordered 
multiplicity, there will be an omnipotent, creative 
reason which is the unity, the world-principle or 
God. Or if, instead of starting from the object 
of thought, we begin with the thinking subject him- 
self, we arrive at the same result. Are the logical 
laws of our reason invented or made by ourselves? 
Found, yes, that is, raised into consciousness and set 
in conceptual formulae, they have been, by thinking 
men, by philosophers like Aristotle or Kant, men 
who have thought searchingly concerning human 

6i 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

thinking itself; but certainly the logical laws of 
the human reason were not made by these thinkers, 
just as little as the arithmetical and geometrical laws 
were made by the mathematicians, or the physical 
laws by the physicists, who first discovered and 
formulated them. The laws of our thinking are 
not products of our thinking, but they are the pre- 
suppositions which alone make our thinking possi- 
ble; as Kant says, they are the '^ previously-given " 
or a priori. Whence, then, originates this core of 
human thinking, common to us all and previously- 
given to all? A non-thinking cause would not 
explain it, and, therefore, there remains but the one 
assumption that it originates in a thinking which is 
presupposed by all human thinking and which is 
superhuman, that same creative reason of God in 
which the lawful order of the external world of 
nature, found its basis. 

Concerning the thought of evolution which gov- 
erns the natural and historical sciences of to-day, it 
must be said that it does not stand in conflict with 
the religious belief in God, when it becomes clear 
what the conception of evolution really includes. It 
is not merely a casually-conditioned consequence of 
various circumstances (as, for example, of the 
weather, or of the surface of the earth, or of a dis- 
integrating organism — of these, no one uses the 
term "evolution''), but it is such a continuous 
alteration of the conditions of one's living, that is 
governed from the beginning by a permanent ira- 

62 



Religion and Science 

pulse, striving toward the final goal of the entire 
process. All evolution strives to attain one goal 
and this, its purpose, which is one finally with the 
phenomenon, as Aristotle even said, is from the be- 
ginning the driving power and the governing law of 
the entire process. Now modern science has taught 
us to regard the total of life in nature, in its mani- 
fold forms and stages, as a connected and uniform 
evolution. Good. That only justifies us the more 
in asking after the purpose of this all-embracing 
evolution of life in nature, and of finding it in man, 
who is the objective-point and highest peak, being a 
child of nature, and yet more than nature, because 
he is a thinking being, a being with reason. Now 
we are reminded, naturally, that the beginning of 
humanity is not to be thought of as a sublime 
spirituality, but rather as a very low animal-like 
naturalness; that is very likely, for even to-day 
every child of man must commence with a similar 
modest beginning. But the conclusion therefrom 
is only this, that the natural man is not the final 
purpose; the evolution of life does not rest with 
him as such, but goes on, no longer as a process 
of nature, but as a historical process of culture. 

But what is the purpose of the ever-to-be-sought 
and partially-achieved goal of historical culture ? It 
is the development of the reason-tendency of man 
into a real reasoning, moral personality; it is the 
becoming of the spiritual man, who conquers nature, 
of and about himself, making it serve as a means of 

63 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

the free spirit. If the last goal of all natural and 
historical development is spirit,- in the formal and 
the real sense of the word, miist we not presuppose, 
that the cause of the entire development was spirit, 
creative spirit, setting and realizing its purpose? 
Or is it thinkable that at the end there should be 
found something in the result which had not been 
present in some fashion in the cause? Can spirit 
arise out of spiritless matter? That would be the 
greatest of the world-riddles. Hence, it may prop- 
erly be said, that the law-abiding order and de- 
velopment of nature and history, this fundamental 
thought of science, does not exclude the belief in 
God, but rather demands it for its own foundation. 
Thus is the harmonization of science and religion 
made certain. 

But a peace-compact between them is not all that 
is possible; they can and they should mutually help 
one another. Religion contains a regulative for 
science, in so far as it protests against one-sided 
world-views, such as materialism, positivism, nihil- 
ism and illusionism, in whch the facts of the spirit- 
ual, particularly of the moral-religious life, are 
deprived of part of their rights. Conversely, science 
serves as a regulative for religion; for with that 
which science has recognized to be undoubted truth 
concerning nature or history, the religious view of 
the world must place itself in harmony, and what- 
ever therein contradicts the traditional ideas can 
not retain validity as actual objective truth. A 

64 



Religion and Science 

double natured truth is an impossibility ; that would 
be a self-contradiction of reason and a denial of the 
unity of God, who is the one cause of all truth. 

Religion, therefore, must abandon such traditional 
ideas as contradict the verified scientific knowledge 
of truth. In the course of its history this has been 
done often enough, even though it was regretfully 
and reluctantly done. In the end, however, it was 
always manifest that religion lost nothing of its 
actual value by such concessions, but rather gained 
in spiritual depth and purity. For those ideas were 
no more than the impurities left over from the child- 
hood period of the race; the sensual forms and the 
wrappings which survive from the nature religion 
are being consumed in the fire of scientific criticism, 
so that their spiritual content remains increasingly 
pure, and religion approaches more and more closely 
to the ideal — the worship of God in spirit and in 
truth. This end is served particularly by the widen- 
ing of the angle of vision, so that it includes not 
merely a single positive religion but the whole his- 
tory of religion. Naturally, a naive piety at first 
is pained and disturbed even by that, as we had 
occasion to see recently in the Babel-Bible con- 
troversy. 

But it is a fact that only he really knows one 
religion who knows more than one religion. Not 
only does the study of comparative religions make us 
tolerant in our attitude toward other religions, be- 
cause it demonstrates that the divine logos dis- 

65 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

tributed the seed-corns of the true and the good 
throughout the world among men, but it also teaches 
us to understand our own rehgion better because of 
the clearer differentiation between the essential and 
the accidental, the permanent and the temporary. 

The question is asked : But what becomes of 
'* revelation '' in all of this ? Well, it is apparent that 
we shall have to relinquish the notion of a unique 
revelation and of a single, infallible revelation ; but, 
in the end, that, too, is no harm, but a benefit. For 
not until then do we learn to know revelation in its 
full breadth and greatness and in its divine-human 
nature, as the one divine light, which, through the 
medium of human spirits, breaks into manifold rays 
and colors. No longer is it narrowxd to one little 
corner of the earth called Palestine, or to a time 
long since past, but in all lands and in all ages God 
has made Himself known and has permitted pure 
souls to find Him, when they sought Kim with 
earnestness and reverence. If, thereby, Christian- 
ity is robbed of its title to being the only religion, it 
does not alter the fact that it is the highest and the 
best. Our valuation of our own religion no longer 
remains an untested faith, but by comparison with 
other historical religions becomes knowledge tried 
and tested. 

Thus, we achieve the result that, instead of de- 
stroying religion, science has, from of old, per- 
formed the most valuable services for religion and 
will continue to perform them. But science can 

66 



Religion and Science 

only do this, if religion does not assume guardian- 
ship over it, granting the fullest freedom to re- 
search, and even more, regarding science as a 
servant of truth, that is, of God. The more the 
light of knowledge unites v^ith the warmth of the 
heart and with the strength of faith, love and hope, 
so much the more will man become the temple of the 
living God. 



ly 



THE BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 

What do we know of the beginnings of religion ? 
Accurately speaking, nothing. For all historical 
testimony does not carry us back to the first begin- 
nings of religion, any more than it does to those 
of language. If we wish to be honest, we must 
confess that we know nothing of the conditions 
which obtained at the beginning of man in general, 
and that we never will have certain knowledge con- 
cerning them. Suppositions only can be offered, 
suppositions which may have more or less probabil- 
ity as far as they rest on reasoning backward by 
analogy, from things known to things unknown; 
but they are always to be differentiated carefully 
from certain knowledge; none of these hypotheses 
can be verified, hence there need be no controversy 
rgarding them. 

Such suppositions are above all based on analo- 
gies with the present primitive (wild) people, con- 
cerning whom it may be accepted that they are 
comparatively nearest to the beginnings of the 
human race. In the religions of the cultured, there 
are to be found everywhere certain elements which 

68 



The Beginnings of Religion 

do not harmonize with the high state of culture ob- 
taining, with the average plane of the intellectual 
and moral culture, hence they may be regarded as 
survivals of some previous plane. If these sur- 
vivals correspond or are closely related to the com- 
mon fundamentals of the religion of the primitives 
the supposition seems not without justification, that 
traces of the beginnings of religion may have been 
preserved in them. Care must be had in such rea- 
soning backward, for it cannot be asserted at the 
outset that the religion of the wild man is really a 
petrified beginning of all human religion ; the possi- 
bility of regress, a degeneration from higher begin- 
nings, is not to be disregarded, the less so, since 
many signs tend to the demonstration of such a 
fact. 

We must also guard against the frequent confu- 
sion of the oldest theoretical basis of religion with re- 
ligion itself. The primitive world-view, or childish 
folk metaphysics, which may be recognized every- 
where, with astonishing regularity, as the common 
basis of the most varied religions, is " Animism,'' 
which is to be understood as a belief in souls or 
spirits in the broadest sense. This belief compasses 
a diversity of things, and, therefore, cannot be 
explained by a single psychological root, but re- 
quires a number of them. The first is ascribing 
soul to nature, as we may observe it to-day, un- 
consciously done by children and consciously done 
by poets. This explains itself ; the natural tendency 

69 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

of man conceives external objects as analogous to 
his own inner conditions, carrying over to them 
his own emotions and passions especially regard- 
ing all the effects arising from the objects after 
the analogy of his own activities, hence looking 
upon them as voluntary actions, which predicate 
a friendly or inimical intention on the part of the 
object acting. So the child strikes the foot of the 
table, against which he struck himself, because he 
regards the unpleasant effect as a consequence of 
the inimical purpose of the table, upon which he 
then seeks to revenge himself. So deeply rooted is 
this tendency to personification or psychification of 
things, that civilized man occasionally grows angry 
at " the perversity of things," as, for instance, when 
the pen refuses to write. Why should we wonder 
then at primitive man, when he ascribes to all the 
things in nature, the immovable and more espe- 
cially the movable things, a manlike soul with 
friendly or inimical purposes? At first, this soul is 
in no way dissociated from the material thing; it is 
nothing other than the thing itself conceived as a 
being with emotions and will, hence very different 
from the free gods. How might these latter have 
become possible? Several psychological motives 
may have contributed thereto. 

Foremost, the experiences of the dream-phenom- 
ena : When, in a dream, w^e experience the presence 
of people who live at a great distance or of friends 
long since dead, and they seem to live again with 

70 



The Beginnings of Religion 

us, or when we journey to distant lands and experi- 
ence wonderful things, then we know that our fan- 
tasy has conjured up these pictures, but the primitive 
man does not know that and therefore considers 
such phenomena to be just as real as those of his 
waking hours ; yet, his understanding tells him that 
it was not possible for his body to make such long 
journeys in the few short hours of the night, and 
that distant or dead friends could not have entered 
bodily through the closed doors and visited him. 
One explanation remains for him : for the time his 
soul wandered out of his body into distant space, 
and the souls of his friends visited him in the night. 
This soul is regarded as the exact double of the 
bodily man, only that it consists of an air-like 
material, and, therefore, it is far more mobile than 
his coarse-material body to which, as its ordinary 
dwelling-place, the soul is usually bound, but it can 
leave him at times and wander about freely. That 
the soul can forsake its body permanently, primitive 
man becomes convinced at the sight of the dying: 
he sees the change of the body, a moment ago it 
moved with strength, now a quiet man lies there 
and he can explain this change only by saying that 
the soul has forsaken this body, with the last breath 
it rode away ; therefore, he concludes, it is identical 
with a breath, a wind ; or it escaped with the stream- 
ing blood, hence it resides in the blood, it is its 
warmth, its vapor. That the soul should cease to 
be at the death of the body is a thought entirely 

71 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

foreign to the primitive; it has merely wandered 
ofif, but it does certainly live on as a breath or a 
shadow, and this is the more certain, for it appears 
again often in dreams or hallucinations. The de- 
parted soul can return and enter into a new body 
as a dwelling-place, either into a human body, into 
some new-bom grandchild as the Indians believe 
and thus explain atavism, or into an animal 
body, particularly of birds and snakes, which are 
frequently regarded as the embodiment of an- 
cestors' souls. These ancestors' souls differ from 
the souls of the things of nature spoken of above 
by their decided human individuality and their 
freedom from bodily limitations, their independent 
freedom of motion ; as against that, these souls must 
do without the powerful and constant enduring 
mode of action which pertains to the greater of the 
things nature endowed with soul. A fusion of 
these two conceptions of souls could not be far 
from their thoughts, and therein the idea of god- 
beings was included. 

Meanwhile a third form of spirit must be added, 
which is, to a certain extent, rooted in primitive 
logic — spirits based on abstract ideas, which have 
been made independent and personified. When sin- 
gle trees or springs of water strike the primitive 
man, he may well worship the powerful and benefi- 
cent soul therein as a deity ; but when the same man 
sees many trees gathered together as a wood, he 
groups the many single specimens into a unit of the 

72 



The Beginnings of Religion 

kind and thinks of this unit again as an independent 
spirit-being, which bears to each single tree the 
relation of prototype and creator of its particular 
life : — the forest-god. In like fashion, there emerges 
from the single springs a general water-god, above 
single fires, a fire-god; above the winds, the wind- 
god — everywhere the idea of the species made in- 
dependent as the creative power of the single 
phenomena. So, too, animal and plant species are 
traced back to one typical original as the divine 
creator and preserver of each individual specimen. 
Finally, every human social group — races, genera- 
tions and families — is traced back to a single 
divine ancestor, which is scarcely the spirit of an 
individual progenitor, but rather a spirit-being 
growing out of the idea of the unity of the group 
and then made independent. In this same category 
of personification of abstract ideas belong the gods 
of activities and conditions, such as growth, fertility, 
birth and death, disease and health, war and peace 
and every other form of cultural activity possible, 
as well as virtues and vices and the like. Lately, 
this sort of deities of activity have been designated 
! as " momentary deities,'^ because they only make 
themselves manifest at times, and they are re- 
garded as the original forms, out of which, in the 
course of time, the permanent, great gods de- 
veloped; such a theory is not susceptible of proof. 
In general, it seems to me to be a useless dispute 
as to which of these different kinds of souls or 

73 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

spirits may have been the earher, and which the 
later; enough that they are to be found in all of 
the oldest religions known to us, and that we are 
able to explain their psychological origin. If we 
cast a glance at the historical religions, in which 
that which was primal has been comparatively best 
preserved, such as the Chinese and Egyptian, the 
proximate supposition seems to be that the being, in 
which a particular communal group, family or clan 
or race or people found its deity, originated in a 
combination of the collective ancestral spirits of the 
group with a personified nature-power, either of 
heaven (China), or of the sun (Japan, Peru, Egypt, 
Ra), or of earth and earthly spirits of fruitfulness 
(Isis-Osiris, Magna Mater), or of a certain species 
of animal (the sacred animals of the Egyptian prov- 
inces and other totemistic tribes). Why, in particu- 
lar cases, this, that, or the other being in nature, was 
deified, we cannot explain, and it is not essential; 
the main fact remains, that each of these groups 
worships in its god the powder by which their com- 
mon life as members thereof and their nature-en- 
vironment was caused and preserved; for each of 
his worshippers, the god is the creating and pre- 
serving power of life, making the group collectively 
permanent. From all of this it might seem as 
though the god were the deified person of some his- 
torical ancestor, — the well-known theory of Eu- 
hemeros, recently taken up again by Herbert Spen- 
cer and others. But this theory is erroneous; it is 

74 



The Beginnings of Religion 

refuted by the indisputable fact that the tribe-god 
of the oldest religions is not thought of as a man, 
but as a living nature-being of heavenly or earthly 
kind. Hence, it has been correctly said by E. 
Caird that he was not worshipped as a god because 
he was an ancestor, but because he was worshipped 
as a god he was held to be the ancestor, the race- 
father of his worshippers. 

Naturally, for us it is an idea scarce conceivable, 
that a sensual object of nature, such as heaven or 
sun or earth, or a mountain, a tree, a river, an ani- 
mal, should have produced men; but we must not 
permit the difficulty involved to lead us to a nega- 
tion of this idea, which recurs everywhere in the 
oldest religions and underlies countless myths, nor 
must we permit ourselves to weaken it to a 
mere imaginative symbolism. In the earliest period 
there is no such thing as symbolism in the sense 
of conscious picture-language; at that time every- 
thing had actual, bodily meaning. Besides, there 
are two things which must be taken into con- 
sideration here: first, that the difficulty involved 
herein for us was not a difficulty for early men; 
and for this reason they did not have our sharp 
differentiation between various species of beings, 
between men, animals, plants, between things living 
and things without life. They were far removed 
from such an idea, and so, too, as it did not seem 
unnatural to them that the one should go over or be 
transformed into the other, so it did not seem im- 

75 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

possible to them that the one should be born of the 
other. 

However, let us not overlook the fact that in 
this idea v^hich seems so incredible to us, there is 
hidden a core of reason. In the idea of the tribal- 
god, early man united two things into one, the 
superhuman, mysterious, permanent power which 
is expressed in his nature-side, and the close rela- 
tionship with men, which he maintains in his capac- 
ity as the father of the tribe; a relationship which 
causes mutual connection, that of protecting ruler- 
ship on the one side and of veneration on the other. 
If he were not a nature-being, then he would not 
possess that superior, permanent power which is 
not separable from the god-idea; if he were not 
at the same time the father (or the mother) of the 
tribe, the source of the common life of the genera- 
tions, the firm bond uniting him with men, the point 
of contact of the religious relation, would be miss- 
ing. So you see that that idea which at first 
glance seemed to us so paradoxical, even grotesque, 
that idea of god in primitive religion, is only the 
naive, and for the childish spirit, the only possible 
form of expression of that reasonable thought of 
God, as the unity of the superhuman and inner 
human being, of nature and spirit. 

From the beginning, this idea of God served not 
only to furnish the other part of a religious alliance, 
but it was also the moral bond of community for 
the worshippers of the same god. Originally, there 

7(y 



The Beginnings of Religion 

was no other moral tie for man than this reHgious 
one; the members of the tribe, in their common at- 
tachment to their divine creator, preserver and 
protector, felt themselves bound into a solidarity 
with one another. From the beginning, the re- 
ligious and the social community were one and the 
same; the latter could not extend beyond the for- 
mer, hence the narrow confines of the cult-com- 
munity and the realm of the god. Yet, however 
narrow its limits, it was some sort of a community, 
in which a religious faith was cherished and cere- 
monially made active. The opinion that religion 
began as a matter of the individual, and with the 
worship of divine beings which belonged to the 
individuals, is a complete error. Everywhere in 
human history the natural community based on 
blood-relationship was the first; in this solidarity 
the individual was merged without regard; and 
only gradually and very slowly came the thought 
of the peculiar right and justification of the indi- 
vidual. Thus it was in all the realms of culture 
and not least in the realm of religion. Here, 
too, the beginning was the common worship by 
the blood-related group,^ — the individual had no 
other gods and worshipped no other gods than 
those of his tribe. If he was expelled from the 
tribe or excluded from the cult, he felt him- 
self thereby separated from his god, and a prey 
to strange gods, from whom nothing good was to 
be expected; that was why the man of ancient 

17 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

days dreaded expulsion from his native place and 
the cult of his home. 

Concerning the oldest form of worship of God, 
scarcely anything can be said without running the 
risk of carrying later customs back to the begin- 
nings. Appeals to the god and sacrifices were prob- 
ably always a part of worship; but it is a difficult 
thing to say w^hat the original meaning of the sacri- 
fice was. It is not at all certain that it was a tribute 
to the god from the beginning ; many signs seem to 
point in favor of the view of Robertson Smith, the 
learned and keen research-worker in religion, who 
holds that the sacrifice was originally nothing else 
than a " holy communion," whether it be taken in 
the sense of a common meal to which the gods 
were invited as guests and received their portion 
of the food and drink, or, perhaps, in the older 
sense, that the life of the god itself was thought 
to dwell in the life of the man or beast sacrificed 
and, by the enjoyment of this raw meat and blood, 
possession of the divine life was entered into. Ac- 
cording to this, the later customs of the mysteries, 
which, without doubt, had some such underlying 
thought, would be but refined forms of the oldest 
sacrifice-worship. This same purpose of union with 
the god is served by the orgiastic dances, in which 
the participants usually enveloped themselves in the 
garments and the masks of the gods : they thought 
that thus they exchanged their nature for that of 
the god and the ecstatic ravings appear, then, as the 

78 



The Beginnings of Religion 

effect of the entrance and possession of them by the 
god (enthusiasm). In remotest antiquity, there 
are also found those customs generally designated 
" Analogy-magic " — activities which imitate a di- 
vine activity, such as fructifying the earth, rain and 
like processes of nature, in order to hasten or pro- 
duce such processes. The term " Analogy-magic " 
is likely to be misleading, for, originally, those acts 
were not merely put forth as analogies or pictures, 
but as actual and effective cooperation with the 
workings of the god, and were thus regarded as a 
real means to a desired effect. Later, when this 
original sense was no longer understood, the 
activity degenerated into a mere ceremony and a 
magic effect was ascribed to it. So, generally, the 
initial, naive-religious ceremonies of worship might 
be the source and origin of what was later actual 
" magic," and, therefore, the latter is not a begin- 
ning, but a degeneration of religion; for in it man 
does not act in the service of the god and for his 
purposes, but without the god and against him, man 
desires to achieve his own purposes by mysterious 
means. 

A like reasoning holds of fetishism, which, with- 
out any more right than in the case of magic, 
has been declared to be a beginning of religion. 
The word " fetish " means an arbitrary natural or 
artificial thing, serving as a ceremonial means of 
worship, in so far as there attaches to it the idea 
of the presence and effective power of a god. Such 

19 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

sacramental signs of the praesens numen are found 
in all cults, because they satisfy the natural need 
for a visible representation of the divine. But 
nowhere are they simply identical with the god, no- 
where are they the adequate expression of its 
nature. The Japanese considers the mirror in the 
temple of the goddess of the sun as a sign of the 
presence of the goddess, but it never occurs to him 
to consider it as the divine sun itself. How would 
it be possible to explain psychologically that men 
had looked upon dead things as their gods, when 
they had not seen any activities on their part? It 
is only after the idea of God had been won in the 
manner already described that arbitrary things could 
be placed in such relation to the god and then serve 
as a means by which the presence of the god at the 
service was achieved. Naturally, the superstitious 
idea might easily grow out of this, as though the 
sacred thing in itself, aside from its ceremonial re- 
lation to the god, possessed a supernatural wonder- 
working power which the individual might employ 
in the production of such magical effects as he 
desired. Thus, what was originally a means of wor- 
ship becomes a means of magic; what was origi- 
nally a pious representation of the god forces itself 
into its place and becomes a substitute for the god. 
Fetishism is the apt name for this superstitious de- 
generation of religion ; hence, the practice of calling 
fetishism the original religion of men ought, finally, 
to cease, 

80 



The Beginnings of Religion 

If you wish to have a fixed name for the original 
religion, such as our reasoning backward from 
what is known, proves to have been the most 
probable, then I would propose to call it naive- 
patriarchal Henotheism. Naturally, the difference 
between that and universal ethical monotheism must 
be well kept in mind. The latter, the belief in one 
all-governing God did not develop until thousands 
of years had elapsed; while the patriarchal heno- 
theism is the naive belief of each tribe in its own 
particular tribe-god and tribe-father, which is for 
all the members of the tribe the one highest, and, 
in a certain sense, that of producer, the one actual, 
divine power, to whom, and through whom, all the 
members of the tribe feel themselves bound abso- 
lutely. But this particular tribal god of each sepa- 
rate tribe does not in any way exclude the tribal 
gods of other tribes, but rather presupposes them; 
he stands to them in exactly the same relationship 
of rivalry, and nearly always of decided enmity, as 
in the early ages one tribe stood toward its 
neighboring tribes. Again, this henotheism is not 
yet a spiritual-moral theism, for this tribal god is, 
as we have seen, entirely an object of nature, and 
his relation to his worshippers is a naturalistic one, 
based entirely upon physical descent. 

Yet we will be permitted to say that despite its 
childlike simplicity, this initial faith contains the 
germs of all higher religious development. Even 
here, the idea of God releases the fundamental re- 

8i 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

ligious emotion — veneration — in which dependence 
and freedom, fear and confidence are united; it 
matters not that now one, and now the other, gains 
greater strength, especially the fear of the incalcul- 
able moods of the nature-gods which play so large 
a part. And it is not to be gainsaid that even this 
faith has its moral importance. By uniting the 
comrades of one tribe in a common worship, he 
elevates the tie of blood-relationship to an absolute 
obligation of reciprocal solidarity, and impresses on 
each individual the elementary moral duty of sur- 
render to the common welfare. It is natural that 
the narrowness of the religious community holds 
as to the moral obligation; those who do not be- 
long to the tribe are strangers and enemies, toward 
whom this early stage recognizes no such thing as 
a moral obligation. Rather, it is accounted a re- 
ligious duty to revenge the blood of a member of 
the tribe when a stranger has spilled it; this duty 
of blood-revenge, with the endless feuds resulting 
therefrom, was a great obstruction to culture every- 
where. Thus, the narrow tribal religion acted 
within as a disciplinary and cultivating power ; while 
without, it was a power which made men nearer to 
the beast and opposed civilization. 

Progress from the henotheistic religion of the 
tribe led nearly always to the polytheistic religion 
of the people. Polytheism, or the belief in a num- 
ber of gods, one alongside the other, is never the 
original religion, but the result of historical devel- 

82 



The Beginnings of Religion 

opment. When, either by reason of treaties or 
by military subjection of one under the other, 
various tribes unite together to form a larger peo- 
ple, they retain their original gods, but separation 
of the one from the other no longer can be main- 
tained. With the union of the people, the need of 
placing the particular gods in some ordered rela- 
tion to one another appears. Either the gods are 
genealogically arranged by making some children 
and grandchildren of others, or feudally arranged 
by gradation of rank under one over-lord, one god- 
king, who is usually the particular deity of the 
governing people or of the capital city of the reign- 
ing dynasty. To which must be added, that in 
these larger social groups, culture is more richly 
developed and differentiated; various trades begin, 
the arts, the political and military vocations, and 
then a special group for the regular care of re- 
ligion, the priesthood. With all of this, the life of 
man achieves a richer content, and that, in turn, 
casts its reflection upon the world of the gods. 
Now there is assigned to each god his particular 
duties and department of government. Thus, each 
single god acquires an individual character, which 
he had not had as a tribal god; now they become 
actual personalities after the image of men. Natu- 
rally, at this stage, the former animal figure of the 
god must give way to the human likeness. This 
was mainly so in the case of the Greek religion; 
there zoomorphism disappeared entirely. Cer- 

S3 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

tainly, that was an important step forward; for not 
until the god was represented as a man could 
human thoughts and free action with a conscious 
purpose be ascribed to him. This humanization 
of the old nature-gods was not completely carried 
out everywhere: in Egypt the process stopped 
half-way, hence those remarkable semi-animal 
and semi-human representations of the gods of 
the Egyptians. Among the Greeks the recollec- 
tion of the former animal form is preserved only 
in the animals which accompany the gods as 
symbols, though originally they were more than 
symbols. 

With this humanization and systemization of the 
gods the religious relation undergoes a change; no 
longer can it remain the simple naturalistic rela- 
tion of descent, for the various families of a peo- 
ple can no longer be related by blood to all the 
gods of the whole people. So that now, instead 
of the patriarchal tie, there appears a political bond : 
the people see in the gods their celestial lords, as the 
princes are their earthly ones; in the highest god, 
they see the heavenly Olympian king, the prototype 
of the mundane king. !And herewith enters the 
most important motive in the beliefs of the peo- 
ples — the god of the people is held to be the origin- 
ator and guardian of the civil order and the avenger 
of injustice which violates that order. Justice on 
earth derives its power and authority from justice 
in heaven; hence the early belief in the divine 

84 



The Beginnings of Religion 

Nemesis, which punishes the blasphemer either 
here, or, as the Egyptians early believed, in the 
world beyond. Beyond doubt, this belief in divine 
retribution was of immeasurable educative impor- 
tance in the development of civilization among the 
peoples. Again, it is true, that with the sprouting 
of human culture, the phenomena of nature were 
more openly and objectively regarded, freer from 
the needs of the moment; the regularity of the 
changes of the seasons and the movements of the 
heavenly bodies are beginning to be observed, and 
in this order of the world of nature, there is 
recognized the counterpart of the moral-legal order 
of human society. Hence, we find this double- 
sided order frequently combined into one idea, and 
in several religions of the older period, it is par- 
tially personified and partly regarded as an imper- 
sonal power ; thus, among the Egyptians, it is Maat, 
the daughter of Ra; among the Indians, Rita; 
among the Persians, Asha vahista; among the Chi- 
nese, Tao; among the Greeks, Dike and Nemesis. 
Everywhere, there is understood by it a uniform 
world-order, which includes the order of nature, 
the civil order of law, the religious order of wor- 
ship. Of course, it does not differ essentially from 
the will of the god, but is rather the expression of 
his constant world-ordering government. There- 
with, the moodiness and the arbitrariness character- 
istic of the nature-gods disappear, and regularity, 
righteousness, wisdom, and, even something of the 

85 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

character of goodness, find a place in the character 
of the god. 

Upon this plane, we find, for the first time, moral 
characteristics connected with the idea of God; it 
begins to be an ethical and spiritual idea. Natur- 
ally, this moral idealization of the nature-gods is 
not accomplished easily nor all at once, for both 
the naturalistic character of the gods of the people, 
more or less crystallized in myths, as well as what 
has been said above, are hindrances. As nature- 
beings, the gods are morally indifferent and act 
upon mood and natural desire; as bearers of the 
legal order, they must assume the attitude of order 
— the two are hard to reconcile. Hence, those re- 
markable contradictions in the pictures, for ex- 
ample, of Zeus, Apollo and Hera in Homer ; along- 
side the frivolous myths, in which wickedness and 
immorality of every kind are told concerning the 
gods, there runs an ideal trait of moral elevation. 
In some measure, one might say that, in their official 
life as regents of the world, they are moral ideals ; 
while in their mythical private life, they are filled 
with human weakness and passions. 

The progress of the history of religion moved 
mainly along the line of this struggle between the 
old naturalism and the higher moral ideal. The 
serious thinkers and prophets struggled on the side 
of the moral ideal everywhere, but they were rarely 
successful; the mass generally stopped at uncertain 
compromises, that "limping to both sides,'' of 

86 



The Beginnings of Religion 

which Zarathustra had no less occasion to complain 
than EHjah. Hand in hand with this struggle 
went the other between the multiplicity of the gods 
and the unity of the divine world-government. 
Progress beyond the polytheism of the popular re- 
ligion went forward in two ways : the one led 
through philosophic reflection to the disintegration 
of the various gods into a single all-god, which, as 
the world-soul or the world-spirit fills all, vivifies 
it and serves as the root of all the change of becom- 
ing and dissolving by being its permanent cause. 

This pantheism was possible w4th polytheism, 
while the single gods were regarded as forms of 
manifestation or emanations of the all-god, as was 
the case in the exoteric Brahmanism and Stoicism ; 
but, with a rigid acceptance of the all-one god, the 
separate gods disappear, as does the manifold of 
existence in general, to a mere, vain semblance. 
The other path starts out from the religious demand 
for a uniform moral world-government and elevates 
the highest god of the people to the position of sole 
bearer of the government high above all the other 
gods, lowering the latter so far in value and power, 
that they finally lose their divine character, and the 
highest god remains finally the only one. That is 
monotheism or the belief in the sole rulership of one 
God as the lord of the entire universe. First steps 
to this double-sided development are to be found 
among the Egyptians and Chinese; first steps 
to monotheism are found among the Persians, 

87 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

Babylonians and Israelites, but the last-named alone 
fully developed it. Pantheistic unity was completed 
by the Indians in Brahmanism and, in a certain 
sense, in Buddhism (which has also been termed 
atheism) ; while among the Greeks, it remained 
merely the philosophic teaching of single schools 
(Eleatics, Heraclitus, Stoics). Christianity may be 
interpreted as the higher unity *of the Jewish and 
the Greek ideas of God. 

Finally, a word about the division of the history 
of religion. According to their extent, the religions 
may be divided into tribal, national and univer- 
sal (world-) religions. According to their inner 
nature, they fall into two main groups: nature- 
religions and historical or moral or personal (pro- 
phetic) religions; the first of these groups may be 
sub-divided into henotheistic (tribal) and polythe- 
istic (national) religions; the second main group 
may be sub-divided into religions of law and of 
redemption. Little as may be urged against this 
division in theory, its practical application through- 
out is difficult, because it is not possible without 
frequent violent disruption of historical connections. 
Hence, in the presentation of the history of religion, 
I prefer a more modest division, either the ethno- 
logical (according to races and peoples) or the 
chronological; naturally, even with this division, a 
certain latitude must be retained for the sake of 
fitness. 

88 



V 



THE CHINESE RELIGION 



We begin with this reHgion, because it occupies 
a position pecuHarly isolated. The ancient Chinese 
state-reHgion is not actually a polytheistic national 
religion, for it lacks all mythology as well as an 
organized priesthood. It might be termed belief 
in spirits systematized to exact correspondence with 
the political organization of the realm, wherein 
the higher gods resulted from a fusion of the 
ancestral spirits of the ruling families with the 
higher nature-spirits. At the head stands heaven 
(Tien) or the "highest lord" (Shang-ti). As 
Tiele aptly says, in him, the highest object of the 
worship of the dead (the species-spirit of the im- 
perial ancestors) has absorbed the highest nature- 
god. The question as to whether this highest god 
is the visible heaven itself or a divine person stand- 
ing over and governing it, cannot be answered 
\ from the standpoint of the popular religion any 
more than the analogous question in the case of the 
Japanese goddess of the sun; for the popular re- 
ligion, the visible heaven (in Japan, the shining 
sun) is the highest world-governing power, which 
is, at the same time, a spiritual being, acting with 

89 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

understanding and will, the '' upper Emperor," who 
orders and rules the world of nature and of men. 
The Chinese say that heaven does not speak to 
the individual man, but reveals itself in regular 
unchangeable order of nature and in the constant 
order of states, which bear the relation of exact 
correspondence to one another. Therefore, dis- 
turbances of nature, such as lasting drought and 
barrenness, point to corresponding mistakes in the 
national government. Just as the order of nature 
holds as prototype and form for moral action, so 
the arrangements of state are considered to be laws 
of nature. However true the thought contained 
herein nmy be, that life in nature as in man has 
in God its common ground, and ordering princi- 
ple, yet it does betray a naturalistic limitation, that 
the difference between natural eventuation and the 
free moral action of men has not yet entered into 
consciousness; what is missing is the conception 
of the personal spirit which determines itself and 
forms its own social ideals out of its own thinking. 
The Chinaman does not regard his government as 
a product of the national will, whose development 
is dependent upon free action, but as a product of 
nature as necessary and as unchangeable as, let us 
say, the state of the bees. So, in his consideration 
of history, every teleological viewpoint is lacking 
and with it every thought of a progressive de- 
velopment which shall realize ideals; his glance is 
ever turned upon the past in which he finds the 

90 



The Chinese Religion 

models for the present and the confirmatory ex- 
amples for the similar, elementary laws of human 
life, particularly for the inevitable concatenation of 
guilt and fate. The advantage of such a mode of 
thinking, for the preservation of what is, is just as 
clear as the disadvantage, the hindrance to indi- 
vidual self-activity and free progress of culture. 

As the various higher and lower officials of the 
Chinese Empire stand under the earthly Emperor, 
so under the heaven-spirit range the spirits of the 
sun, the moon and the stars, the earth and the four 
world-quarters, the forests and the hills, the springs 
and the rivers, which now, as spirits of a species, 
rule over an entire realm, and again as single spirits 
are bound to certain places and phenomena. 
Finally, there are the ancestral spirits of single 
families, which are again ranked into those of the 
higher and of the lower orders of the people. As 
with the highest heaven-spirit, so the spirits of the 
noble families have fused with nature-spirits, and 
they with certain realms of nature within their 
provinces. 

This hierarchy in the spirit-world corresponds to 
a rigidly-regulated order of worship. Common to 
them all is the worship of ancestors by families 
which is celebrated in every house on all festive 
occasions of the family life; in the hall of the an- 
cestors, before the tablets bearing the names of the 
ancestors, father and mother perform the rites, con- 
sisting of prayers and offerings of flowers, followed 

91 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

by a common meal, to which, in conformity with 
ancient custom, the spirits are invited. Often their 
unseen presence is rendered visible by selecting one 
of the boys of the house, dressing him in the clothes 
of his dead grandfather and placing him in the seat 
of honor at the table, so that he, the " dead boy," 
represents the whole spirit-host of the ancestors of 
the house and serves, at the same time, as the visi- 
ble guarantee of their gracious presence and their 
blessed participation in the fortunes of the house. 
Each one has the free right to pray to the higher 
spirits of heaven and earth and the four quarters 
state to perform the festival rites in worship of 
them. At the feasts of the spring and the autumn, 
the Emperor makes sacrifice in the open air to the 
spirits of heaven and earth and the four quarters 
of the heaven, and in like fashion, the governors 
of provinces worship the particular spirits of their 
provinces. The highest festival is the festival of 
the royal ancestors, at which the Emperor, sur- 
rounded by the highest dignitaries of the realm, 
makes various sacrifices to the ancestors of his 
house and to all of his predecessors upon the throne, 
whereupon the spirits are invited by music and the 
singing of songs to participate in the sacrificial 
meal. Here, too, the " dead boy '' appears ; it is 
one of the imperial grandsons, who represents, in 
his person, the highest ancestral host of the realm. 
This is the festival which marks the highest point 
of Chinese worship, and is typical in character; no 

92 



The Chinese Religion 

priesthood functions as mediator of supermundane 
powers or for the winning of supermundane bene- 
fits, but civic authorities, representing the Chinese 
nation, celebrate by thanksgiving and prayer the 
continuance of the state, inextricably bound up with 
the will of the god; it is a state-religion in so 
peculiar a degree, as can be found only among the 
Romans, where the state was also not only the 
subject, but, at bottom, the object of religion, 
represented in Jupiter Capitolinus and later in the 
Caesars. That this lack of priesthood, church and 
theology, this immediate oneness of religion and 
political state, was very useful in political regard is 
best shown by the history of China, which owes the 
five thousand year duration of its government to 
that firm basis. But the other side of this pohtical 
usefulness is the lack of depth and heartiness in the 
religion, a lack of content of ideas which satisfy 
spirit and soul; the Chinese religion lacks not only 
priests but prophets — the inspired bearers of eternal 
ideals. The stability of state and religion was pur- 
chased at the price of enchainment to unchangeable 
popular forms and ceremonies, at the price of the 
suppression of personal freedom and of historical 
progress. 

Nevertheless, China did not lack wise teachers, 
who exercised a deep influence upon the thought 
of the people. Chief among them were Lao-tsze and 
Confucius, both of the sixth century B.C. Lao-tsze, 
born 604 B.c.^ in the province of Thsu, was an ofii- 

93 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

cial in the imperial house of Tsheu; at a ripe old 
age, however, disgusted by the condition of public 
affairs, he went into voluntary exile, but not until 
he had left his work, ^' Tao-te-King," with his dis- 
ciples. This '' Book of Tao " contains many a 
puzzle for the learned men of our own day. What 
does Tao mean? Really way, but it also means 
much more. It has been compared to the Indian 
Brahma and to the Heraclitean-Stoic logos; only 
recently, Guimet, the well-known Parisian student 
of religious research, attempted to prove, in a lec- 
ture delivered at the Congress of the Historians of 
Religion at Basle (September, 1904), that Lao-tsze's 
Tao doctrine originated in India and that in Tao 
are gathered up the conceptions of Brahma (world- 
spirit), Karma (law of causation), Dharma (law 
of moral conduct), and Boddhi (highest wisdom 
and sanctity). I am not going to take up the ques- 
tion whether this hypothesis can be proved or not; 
instead of disputing about it, I hold it more to the 
purpose to impart to you some literal extracts from 
this mysterious book itself; you will certainly gain 
the impression that the author was a deep and noble 
thinker, perhaps too deep to find true understand- 
ing among the Chinese people. I quote from the 
translation of the learned student of Chinese 
language and literature, Reinhold von Plaenkner 
(Leipzig, 1870). 

"There does exist an all-filling, completely perfect being, 
which existed before heaven and earth. It exists in sublime 

94 



The Chinese ReHgion 

stillness, it is eternal and unchangeable and permeates 
unhindered everywhere. One might look upon it as the 
creator of the world. I do not know its name, but I like best 
to call it Tao; if I were to give it an attribute, it would be 
that of highest sublimity. Yes, sublime is that being, about 
which moves the all and all in all; as such, it must be eternal, 
and as it is eternal, it must, consequently, be omnipresent. 
Yes, Tao is sublime, sublime is heaven, sublime the earth, 
sublime, too, is the ideal of men. Thus there are four sub- 
lime beings in the universe, and without doubt, the ideal of 
man is one of them. For man originates from earth, the 
earth from heaven, the heaven originated in Tao, and Tao, 
without question, found its origin in itself. The whole of 
created nature, all its doing and its working, is but an emana- 
tion of Tao — Tao making itself visible. Although this being 
is all spirit and no matter, yet does it compass all things 
visible and all beings are in it. Inconceivable and invisible, 
however, there dwells in it a sublime spirit. This spirit is 
the highest and most perfect being, for in it are truth, faith, 
trust. From eternity unto eternity, its glory will never 
cease, for in it is the union of the true, the good and the 
beautiful in the highest degree of perfection. But how can 
I know that? I know it from itself, from Tao. (Our con- 
sciousness of God then is the inner revelation of the same 
divine spirit, which reveals itself in the external world as the 
basis of all reasonable order and harmony.) For through 
this spirit, the incomplete achieves completion, perfection, 
fulfillment; him who is bowed down, it raises up, it strength- 
ens the weak, corrects the imperfect, as it gives new life to 
barren vales, new life and freshness to ruins. There are, 
naturally, only a few who understand that, most men are 
blinded by error. But the wise man grasps Tao, compasses 
it in its totality and places it before the world as a luminous 
model. For, even though it be not seen, it shines clearly 
toward us everywhere; and though it stand not before our 
eyes as itself, it doth make itself known through its revela- 
tions. Though it does not praise itself for its works, yet its 
works do praise it. Though it does not show itself in its 
sublimity, yet its sublimity surpasses all things. How could 

95 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

there be any desire to dispute concerning it? The words 
which those of old had already spoken 'That which is imper- 
fect, he will perfect,' they are not vain words. No, we will 
in truth see perfection in light, when we enter into and return 
to him." 

That the knowledge of truth is mediated by the 
dialectic of contraries, that deep thought, which 
governed the philosophy of Heraclitus, the con- 
temporary of Lao-tsze is expressed in the following 
sentences, which I offer according to Guimet's 
translation : " What was it which made all recog- 
nize the beautiful as beautiful, it was the ugly ; that 
they knew the good to be good, it was the bad ; thus 
being and not-being, the material and the non- 
material, the light and the heavy, the high and the 
low, mutually produce one the other. Therefore 
will the wise man make both, the non-material as 
well as the material, the object of his thinking 
knowledge." 

And now, something about the moral principles, 
which Lao-tsze logically deduced from his Tao- 
speculation : 

*' In all that you do, obey the Tao, then will the Tao be so 
one with you, as virtue with the virtuous. How would it be 
possible to see the Tao and yet be bad, to go forward in one's 
knowledge and go backward in one's morals? or conversely, 
how can a man despise the Tao and be good and righteous? 
True, by industry, one can protect oneself against poverty, 
by equanimity, conquer the everyday happenings of life; 
but purity and clarity of spirit are needed in order to know 
the right, the good and the perfect in the world, and to act 
in accordance with that knowledge and to be an exemplar 

96 



The Chinese Religion 

of the dignity of man. He who knows men is clever, but 
he who knows himself is enlightened. He who conquers 
others has a hero's might, but he who conquers himself has 
strength of soul. He who understands how to be contented, 
he is rich, and he who acts energetically, he has will-power. 
He who does not lose his Ego, continues permanently, he 
dies but he is not extinguished, he has won eternal life. 
What is of greater concern to us, our reputation or our Ego ? 
Which has greater value, wealth or Ego? Are not the con- 
sequences of the sins, which we commit easily in the pursuit 
of earthly goods, much worse for the salvation of our soul 
than the loss of all gathered treasures? The heart of the 
wise man beats equally for all humanity. Toward him who 
is good and noble, I am similarly inclined, says the wise man, 
and toward him who stumbles and falls, ought I not also to 
be good? Toward him who is not upright and honest, 
ought I to act faithlessly and dishonestly? No. See, that 
(being good and faithful even to the stumbler and the dis- 
honest) is true goodness of heart and true uprightness and 
loyalty, which emanates from heavenly virtue. The wise 
man regards and treats human beings as his very own chil- 
dren. He has three treasures, whose soul is filled with Tao; 
they are love, which is strength of soul, and contentedness, 
which is greatness of soul; and humility, which never urges 
itself to the fore. Those who fight with the weapons of love, 
they win the greatest victory, the victory over themselves; 
thereby they are protected from all misfortune and shielded 
from all evil, hence they have eternal life. As water, which 
is the most yielding and most movable, overcomes that which 
is firm and strong, so, says the wise man, that which is weak 
and yielding overcomes that which is unbending and hard. 
The wise man carries the dust of the earth and yet he is called 
the master of all masters, he bears the sorrows of the world 
and yet he is called the king of the whole world. As the 
powerful rivers sway all because they descend into every- 
thing, so the wise man: if he wishes to stand over all the 
people, he must go down among them with word and teach- 
ing; if he wishes to be a guiding light for them by wisdom 
and strength of spirit, then the best method is to place his 

97 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

own person in the background. Whoever wishes to main- 
tain his superiority over the people, must never let them 
feel any kind of pressure, must never injure or enslave them, 
but must do all manner of good to them. Then will the 
world acclaim him, love and honor him, and, since he has 
given no occasion for discontent and quarrel, the world will 
live in peace and there will not be combat or discontent any- 
where on earth. " 



I have said that the teaching of Lao-tsze was too 
high, too ideal for the '' common sense " of the 
Chinese which was directed only to what was use- 
ful. Lao-tsze found but a small circle of adherents 
and what is worse, within this circle, there was so 
little understanding of his depth, that, in the course 
of time, it became perverted into the nonsense of a 
spiritless superstition and crude witchcraft, so that 
the Tao sect to-day is the least respected of any 
among cultured Chinese. 

Lao-tsze's younger contemporary, Confucius, had 
xmuch better fortune. Born 551 b.c.^ in the prov- 
ince of Lu, he began his teaching as a young man 
of twenty-two. He led an unsettled life, now pat- 
ronized by the duke of his province, even acting as 
his minister at one time, then, falling from favor 
because of his loyalty to his convictions, he was 
exiled and wandered about homelessly for many 
years, living on the benevolence of his friends. 
Finally, at the end of his long life, he was recalled 
with honors, but accepted no new office, living 
entirely for his studies until his death in 478. 
Confucius desired to teach nothing new, but only to 

98 



The Chinese Religion 

transmit the pure and uncurtailed traditions of the 
ancients, which are unchangeable, because of their 
heavenly origin. He was more a teacher of morals 
and statecraft, more a writer and a historian than 
a prophet or founder of a religion. Religiously 
cold, even to skepticism, he had no high regard for 
prayer and did not meddle with transcendental 
questions. Nevertheless, he was a noble ethical 
thinker, who, in some respects, reminds us of our 
own Kant, both in that which he said and in that 
which he left unsaid. He never expressed himself 
polemically against the beliefs or the customs of his 
people ; his nature was far too conservative for that. 
His heart, however, was not with the religious tra- 
ditions; his interest was limited to the moral 
principles. 

Concerning spirits, he said : " Honor them with 
a sense of piety, but hold yourself aloof from 
them.'' When he was asked whether they should 
be worshipped with sacrifices, and whether they 
knew of or benefitted by the sacrifices, he an- 
swered : *' Honor the spirits of thy ancestors, and 
act as though they were the ever-present witnesses 
of thy actions, but seek to know nothing further 
concerning them." When asked concerning things 
after death, he gave this opinion: "As long as you 
do not know^ life, how can you know anything con- 
cerning death ? " With all that, he was not merely 
a moralist, but his ethics was based upon a religious 
foundation, somewhat in the sense of Fichte's faith 

99 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

in the moral world-order. Human life, Confucius 
taught, should be regulated according to the un- 
changeable, fixed order of natural and social ex- 
istence laid down by heaven; this "decree" of 
heaven, which apportions to each his duties and his 
fate, should be respected by the wise man; obedi- 
ently and humbly, he should submit thereto and 
never murmur against heaven. Confucius believed 
in a governing righteousness in the world-course, 
which, even if not without exceptions in the cases 
of individuals, does in the main reward the good 
and punish the evil. Whether that providence was 
to be thought a personal one or not, he leaves un- 
decided; he himself preferred the impersonal ex- 
pression Tien (heaven) to the personal one, 
" Shang-ti.'' As a true son of his nation, he con- 
sidered respectful submission to parents, ancestors 
and rulers in all the circumstances of life, to be the 
highest virtue. Yet he demanded of the rulers that 
they set the example of virtue, that they win the 
confidence of their people and not burden them 
unduly, that they seek to better them more by in- 
struction than by punishment. As the conception 
of what is morally right he designated the golden 
rule of reciprocity : " What you do not wish that 
another do unto you, do not unto others." He 
acknowledged humbly that there were four things 
which he had never achieved entirely: to serve his 
father as he would have his son serve him ; to serve 
the prince as he would have his minister serve him ; 

100 



The Chinese ReHgion 

to serve his older brother as he would have his 
younger brother serve him ; and to treat his friend 
as he would have his friend treat him. In addition 
to the principle of Lao-tsze, that wrongdoing should 
he returned by good, Confucius thought : " Where- 
with shall, then, good be repaid? Rather, return 
justice for injustice, and good for good." 

It is conceivable that soon after his death, Con- 
fucius was worshipped by the Chinese as their high- 
est authority, as the sum-total of wisdom and the 
good genius of their country. Five classical works, 
which form the permanent basis of Chinese science 
and world-view, in part, he collected and edited, 
and in part he wrote. They are, " Yih-king," the 
book of wisdom ; " Shu-king," the book of history, 
"Shi-king," the book of songs ; ''Le-ke," the book of 
religious and worldly customs, and " Chun Tsew," 
the book of the annals of the Lu district. This 
last work is about his own native place, and was 
written by himself. It can no longer be said how 
far he altered the traditional material, or of how 
much of it he made use; this much is certain, that 
the classical books, in the form in which he left them, 
are the expression of the Chinese ideal, in some 
measure, as it was handed down to him and more 
clearly defined by him, and that he impressed it so 
thoroughly upon his people that their thought and 
action to-day is governed by it. The most im- 
portant of his successors was Mengtse (371—288 
B.C.), who applied the teachings of Confucius to 

lOI 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

practical governmental life with cleverness and 
great courage. 

Finally, it must be noted that in the year 65 a.d., 
under the Emperor Mingti, Buddhism was brought 
to China by Indian missionaries ; between the fourth 
and the sixth centuries, it gained the controlling 
position, but in such fashion that Taoism and 
Confucianism remained alongside of it, and forced 
Buddhism to accommodate itself, in a measure, to 
them. In China, these three religions are not 
strictly dififerentiated ; a Chinaman can belong to 
all three at the same time, and, in fact, he actually 
does so, by following the principles of Confucius in 
the acts of his daily life, by employing the magic 
means of Taoism in extraordinary cases, while 
for things concerning death and the beyond, he 
turns to a priest of one of the ten Buddhistic sects 
for its consolations. Such religious toleration 
may be admired, but one may be permitted to ask 
the question whether that very toleration does not 
betray the unsatisfactoriness of each of these re- 
ligions? And, whether they are not destined to 
be set aside for a higher religion? 



102 



VI 



THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION 



As FAR back as the ancients, Egypt was the land 
of riddles and it has remained so to this day. The 
civilization of the Egyptians is of so remarkable 
a nature that it is not easy for us to understand 
it; it unites, seemingly without mediation, direct 
opposites. Alongside of one another, we find the 
awkward hieroglyphic picture-signs and a per- 
fected alphabet script; in the crafts, the most an- 
tiquated apparatus of the Stone Age alongside of 
highly-developed metal-work. So, too, the Egyp- 
tian religion is a wondrous mixture of crude, 
antique legends and customs with high thought 
almost touching monotheism. Everywhere we find 
a tenacious conservatism alongside of a hearty, 
progressive development of civilization. For this 
reason, the Egyptian is a particularly instructive 
example of the evolution of religion in its early 
stages. 

Before anything else, due regard must be had 
for the worship of animals, a fact which struck 
the ancients as a peculiarity of this religion. Every 
district had its own peculiar sacred animal; every 
animal of the species was sacred for the inhabi- 

103 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

tants of the district and one specimen was cared for 
in the temple and worshipped. The bull Apis, at 
Memphis as the incarnation of the local god Ptah, 
the bull Mnevis at Heliopolis (local-cult of the 
sun-god Ra), and the ram at Mendes enjoyed the 
distinction of general worship; these cults, origin- 
ally local, became general in the unified empire. 
In other places the following animals were wor- 
shipped as sacred: cat, dog, monkey, crocodile, 
ranny, sparrow-hawk, ibis, snake, frog, scarab 
(beetle) and the like. The temple inscriptions of the 
middle epoch of the empire give no information 
about this worship of animals ; this fact gave rise 
to the conclusion that the Egyptian worship of 
animals was not original but a result of the degen- 
eration of the religion in a later period. But 
Manetho, the historian, expressly testifies to its 
existence at the time of the Second Dynasty (about 
3000 B.C.) and the complete or semi-zoomorphic 
representation of the gods throughout corroborate 
him; thus, Horus was sometimes a sparrow-hawk, 
and sometimes a man with the head of a sparrow- 
hawk; Hathor was a woman with a cow's head 
and horns; Osiris, a man with the head of a bull 
or ibis ; Khem and Amen with a ram's head. 

The complete zoomorphic representation was the 
older of the two, for the semi-humanization did 
not begin until the Twelfth Dynasty. Hence, it may 
safely be concluded, that the Egyptian gods were 
originally represented as animals. But that can- 

104 



The Egyptian Religion 

not possibly be explained as some priestly specula- 
tion which simply regarded the animals as " sym- 
bols of the nature-powers," and " pantheistic forms 
of the manifestation of the original god/' We 
ought never to forget that symbolism is never a 
factor in the oldest religions, but that there every- 
thing was meant most really; not until a much 
later stage of rationalistic reflection does the sym- 
bolical interpretation of customs appear, and then 
they have either lost sanction or their original 
meaning is no longer understood. 

What are we to regard as the original sense of 
the Egyptian animal-gods? The simplest answer 
to this question is, without doubt, a comparison to 
the " totemism " of many Indian and negro tribes, 
that is, with the widespread custom according to 
which single social groups believed their peculiarity 
and difference from others to have been estab- 
lished by descent from a certain species of animal, 
and that species-spirit, they worshipped as their 
tribal-god (their "totem''). In Egypt, also, ani- 
mal-worship belonged, at first, to single districts of 
the country, which, even after political alliance, 
through the unification of the empire, maintained 
their religious separation, one from the other, by 
their attitude to the same animal, so that the animal 
held sacred in one district would be regarded as 
profane in the adjacent district and vice versa. In 
later times, it was not a rare occurrence that the 
injuring of the sacred animal of one district, by the 

105 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

people of the next district, led to bloody combat. 
How would such a state of affairs be thinkable if 
the whole view were nothing more than the sym- 
bolic poetizing of priestly speculation? The only 
explanation is that of a survival of early totemistic 
faith. 

But these animal-gods, which we may regard as 
the oldest, stand alongside the higher great gods of 
that phase of the Egyptian religion with which we 
are acquainted, and concerning which the temple 
inscriptions give us information. In the first in- 
stance, these gods were personified nature-powers: 
gods of the sun and the moon, of heaven, earth, 
the underworld, and the Nile; to these must then be 
added the genies of fruitfulness and of growth, of 
order, righteousness, truth, knowledge, and the like. 
I have said that these deities were represented as 
half-animals in the worship-pictures; but, on the 
other hand, it must be remembered, as is clearly 
shown by the myths and the hymns, that they are 
thought of as human, acting persons; so it seems 
as though this worship of gods parallels the animal- 
worship, as though they were two religions, differ- 
ing entirely in their nature and their origin, and 
neither one to be explained by the other. Mean- 
while, the question arises : Must there not have been 
some sort of connection between them, which we do 
not know, merely because it took place in some pre- 
historic period? We must leave that problem to 
later research-students. 

io6 



The Egyptian Religion 

In any event, the high gods were originally 
local gods too, and by the alliance of the single 
districts into a united empire they were brought into 
relation to one another. The oft-recurring con- 
nection of three gods into the family group, father, 
mother and son, is very ancient; such groups are: 
Osiris, Isis and Horus at Abydos; Ptah, Sechet, 
and Imhotep at Memphis; Amen, Maut, and 
Chonsu at Thebes. Then, too, various gods from 
different localities were fused into one and taken 
thus into the religion of the realm, as, for example, 
Amen Ra, Ra-Harmachis, Ptah-Sokar-Osiris and 
others. Ra was the sun-god of Heliopolis, whom 
the kings of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2500 B.C.) 
elevated to his central position in the religion of 
the realm ; about this central god, by the inter- 
weaving of political motives and priestly specula- 
tion, there developed a sun-theology, which sought 
to transform most of the local gods into sun-gods 
by gradual assimilation with Ra. The myths tell 
of Ra that he was originally a king who ruled in 
some golden age, but that when he became old and 
feeble, men grew overbearing and revolted against 
him ; through the goddess Hathor, he made bloody 
havoc of the rebels, but saved them from entire 
destruction. Finally, he grew tired of rulership 
over the thankless and determined to reside only in 
heaven and establish a new world-order. 

May not this myth contain a reminiscence of the 
religious-historical transformation, by which the 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

earthly tribal-god of one of the local ancestor-wor- 
ships had been elevated to the position of heavenly 
sun-god at the head of the national pantheon? I 
suggest the question, merely, and leave the answer 
to the history of comparative religions (recall the 
sun-gods of Japan and Peru), Another myth 
describes Ra's journey across the heavens in his 
sun-bark, his combat with the dragon Apep, his 
defeat and descent into the underworld, his return 
through the land of darkness, in which there are 
tw^elve dangerous portals which must be passed 
through in the twelve hours of the night, and his 
return into the world of daylight. We will meet 
this myth again when we discuss the ideas of the 
fate of souls in the world beyond. 

Osiris is usually called the sun-god of Abydos, 
but, in the second volume of the '' Golden Bough," 
Frazer has proved, on satisfying grounds, that it 
was not a sun-god originally, but rather a god of 
vegetation, of the fruitful earth, and of the under- 
world. The legend is well known in which Osiris 
is murdered by his inimical brother Set, of the 
plaint of his wife and sister, Isis, who sought his 
corpse, and when she found the pieces at last fitted 
them together, giving them new life, whereupon 
Osiris became the ruler in the realms of the dead, 
while, upon earth, his son, Horus, avenged his 
death, first by a combat v/ith Set, and then, by bring- 
ing the matter before the judgment seat of the gods, 
who, after a formal trial, declared Set to be con- 

io8 



The Egyptian Religion 

quered, Osiris to be king of the dead, and Horus 
to be king of the Hving; and his successors became 
the kings of Egypt. This myth, of the dying and 
reviving god, reaches back into the farthest antiq- 
uity, and was a common possession of the rehgions 
of Asia Minor, Greece and Egypt; naturally, its 
root is the annual experience of the death of nature 
in Autumn and its rebirth in the Spring. The 
myth which grew out of it presents dramatically 
not only the change of nature-life but also the 
fate of men with its opposites of life and death, joy 
and sorrow, fear and hope; that myth was richer 
in soulful motives and premonitions than others, 
and, therefore, in the course of time, it became the 
basis of the mystery-cults, which played such an 
important part in the history of religion. 

The god of Memphis, Ptah, owes the general 
worship given to him solely to the political im- 
portance of Memphis, as the capital of the ancient 
empire. In the later priestly theology, he became a 
sun-god and was elevated to the position of world- 
creator (the Greeks compared him to their He- 
phaestus) but, originally, he was no more than a 
god of earthly f ruitf ulness ; the bull. Apis, who was 
lodged next to the Ptah-temple, was looked upon 
as his son or *^ second life,'' which means as much 
as to say that the god Ptah was, in the beginning, 
no more than the totemistic bull-god of Memphis. 

Amen, the local god of Thebes in Upper Egypt, 
was originally a god of fruitfulness^ of the earth, 

109 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

and of the dead; that is, he was to Upper Egypt 
what Osiris was to Lower Egypt. In the new 
empire, however, whose first dynasties came from 
Thebes, Amen was fused for poHtical reasons with 
the former highest god of the empire, Ra, and they 
became one divine person; this Amen-Ra was from 
that time on the highest god of Egypt, the sun-god 
par excellence, who was extolled as the creator and 
the preserver of the whole world. In the eleva- 
tion of this god to heavenly kingship, the counter- 
part of the kingship on earth, brought about as 
much by political motives as religious speculation, 
Egyptian theology approaches monotheism. Con- 
cerning Amen-Ra, one hymn, which I take from 
Erman's translation (Die Aegyptische Religion, 
S. 62.), reads as follows: 

**He it is, who has made all, the one with many hands. 
He commanded and the gods came into being; he is the 
father of the gods, he it is, who made men and created the 
animals. Men came forth out of his eyes and gods out of his 
mouth. He it is, who creates pasture for the herds and the 
fruit-tree for men, who creates nourishment for the fish in 
the river and the birds beneath the heavens. For his sake, the 
Nile comes, and when he, the much-beloved comes, men live. 
And the head of the gods is friendly of heart, when he is 
called upon. He protects the timid against the bold. There- 
fore do all things, as far as the heavens and the earth extend, 
love and worship him. The gods bow before his majesty and 
magnify their creator; they rejoice when their creator ap- 
proaches. Praise thee, says every animal; praise thee, 
says every desert. Thy beauty conquers every heart, the 
love of thee paralyzes arms and hands, the heart forgets be- 
cause the eye looks after thee. He is the living lamp, which 

no 



The Egyptian Religion 

rises out of the heavenly ocean. In him, do the oppressed set 
their trust, for he is the Vizier, who will not suffer himself 
to be bribed." 

King Amenophis IV. (1400 B.C.) made one 
more step toward complete monotheism by elevating 
Aton to the position of sole god, and attempting 
to suppress the worship of all the other gods, par- 
ticularly that of Amen-Ra. Aton really means the 
sun-pane, but it was intended merely as the form 
in which the living personal god behind it mani- 
fested himself. A powerful impression of the 
depth and heartiness of this belief in God is afforded 
by the following hymn (Erman, S. 68) : 

**How much there is which thou hast made. Thou didst 
create the earth according to thy wish, thou alone, with men 
and with all animals. The foreign lands of Syria and Ethi- 
opia and the land of Egypt — each one didst thou set in its 
place and create what it had need of; each one has his 
own possession and the duration of his life was reckoned. 
Their tongues are separated by their languages and their ex- 
ternals according to their color; Differentiator, thou didst 
differentiate the peoples. Thou didst create the Nile in the 
depth and dost lead him hither at thy pleasure to give nour- 
ishment to men. Thou didst create the life-nourishment of 
all distant lands and didst set a Nile in heaven that it may 
flow down to them ; he forms waves upon the mountains like 
an ocean and moistens their fields. How beautiful are thy 
decrees, thou lord of eternity. The Nile of heaven didst thou 
give over to the strange peoples and the animals of the desert, 
but the Nile from the depth comes for Egypt. Thou didst 
create the seasons, in order to preserve all thy creatures, the 
winter to cool them and the glow that they may taste thee. 
The distant heaven thou didst create in order to shine upon 
it, in order to see all thy creatures, alone and rising in thy 

III 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

form as living sun, shining forth, radiant, departing and re- 
turning. Thou didst create the earth for them, who in thee 
alone had their origin, cities and tribes, roads and streams. 
The eyes of all see thee before them, when thou art the sun 
of day over the earth." 

It IS astonishing to see with what freedom the 
poet of this hymn rises above the limitations of the 
popular national religion in that he recognizes that 
the one god had created the various peoples, each 
with its own peculiarity, and governs strangers as 
well as Egyptians with like paternal care. These 
are the thoughts of a king, an enlightened spirit, 
who sought to burst the narrow bounds of tradi- 
tion, of ceremonial, and of the guardianship of 
priests, and sought to free himself and his people 
so as to enter into a path of freer human thinking 
and habit. Among those about him, and even 
among the priests, he met with some success and 
gained adherents; nevertheless, his bold attempt at 
reformation failed, for his all^oo-stormy march 
met an insurmountable obstacle in the obtuseness of 
the masses and the reaction of the mighty priesthood 
of Amen-Ra. Under the successors of Amenophis 
IV, these priests succeeded in dethroning the here- 
tical dynasty, and were able to eradicate even the 
name of the hated innovator and of his all-one god, 
Aton, so thoroughly from the historic monuments 
of the great sanctuaries that it was not until the 
excavation of the ruins of Tel-el-Amarna, the resi- 
dence of the heretic, in our own day, that this 

112 



The Egyptian Religion 

remarkable episode in the history of the Egyptian 
religion came to light again. 

Under the kings of the new dynasty, Rameses 
II and III (13th century B.C.), the kings sought to 
prop their political power by making close alliance 
with the ruling priesthood; it was at this time 
that the national polytheism of Egypt reached its 
height. All over the land, the old sanctuaries most 
highly regarded were richly finished and sumptu- 
ously fitted up. The ecclesiastical restoration gave 
official protection to all of the old popular super- 
stitions, particularly animal worship, and even to 
the great mass of formulae for exorcism and magic. 
Simultaneously, the beginnings of decay appeared 
in a syncretism which tended toward the disintegra- 
tion of the many popular gods by uniting them 
into one pantheistic all-deity. With all these 
changes, only one thing remained constant — the 
belief in the divinity of the kings as the sons of the 
sun-god. Even the Ptolmeies, the highly cultured 
Greek successors to the throne of the Pharaohs, 
did not disdain to make use of this. Attempts 
have been made to explain this faith as Byzantin- 
ism, but that is hardly correct. How could it 
have been rooted so deeply in popular conscious- 
ness and maintained itself so well? This belief 
was rather a survival of that early belief in the 
divine descent of the ruling race as the representa- 
tive of the entire people, a belief which we meet 
everywhere in gray antiquity. For those tribes 

113 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

attributed to themselves universally a blood rela- 
tionship with the tribal deity. Therefore, vv^hat 
was originally considered to be true of the tribe 
collectively was later narrowed into the belief of the 
special divinity of the kings, and finally of the 
Roman Emperor as the last heir of the ancient 
national religions. 

Finally, there is the third point in which the 
Egyptian religion is distinguished, — the worship 
of the dead. A number of differing views are met 
here, one alongside the other, and at the outset we 
must forego every attempt either to mediate or to 
harmonize one with the other. According to the 
oldest view, the soul of the deceased perpetually 
remains attached to the body, hence the Egyptian 
care for the preservation of the corpse by embalm- 
ing, and the protection of the same in a safe tomb. 
The " dwellings for eternity," as the tombs were 
called, formed extended cities of the dead, usually 
located to the west of the cities of the living. The 
kings used, as their burial places, the colossal pyra- 
mids, while the nobles and the wealthy used rock 
caverns. In every instance, there was a securely- 
locked grave chamber before which there was an 
ante-room with a sacrificial table for the worship 
of the dead. The tomb equipment for the use of 
the soul beyond consisted of water jugs, chairs, 
arms, books on magic, a little boat with a crew, 
and statuettes of male and female servants; many 
pictures and inscriptions concerning the deeds of 

J14 



The Egyptian Religion 

the dead adorned the tombs of the kings, and these 
are the principal source of our knowledge of the 
history of Egypt. It was the duty of the living to 
bring gifts for the soul to the grave, and to repeat 
formulae on all feast days ; the magic power of the 
formulae was supposed to bring the joys of earth 
to the soul in the world beyond. There were also 
payments made for the regular saying of masses 
for the dead by the priests. This was customary 
among the upper classes. All of this is based on 
the presupposition that the spirit of the deceased, 
his Ka, lives on in the grave, " the house of the Ka," 
and depends on the preservation of his body, which 
requires such nourishment as sacrificial gifts and 
magic formulae. 

There is another view, that the soul, Ba, moves 
like a bird, free from the body which it visits from 
time to time in the grave, but it can also soar to 
heaven above and change into various beings at 
pleasure. So, for example, the soul may embody 
Itself in snakes or plants — this is the animistic basis 
of all the theories of the transmigration of the 
soul. 

Different, again, is the view of the journey of the 
soul to the world beyond which it undertakes with 
the sun-god, Ra, in his night-ship through the un- 
derworld. This is divided into twelve stations, 
one for each of the twelve hours of the night, and 
each of these is guarded by a fearful monster 
such as the wicked dragon Apep (Apophis). By 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

magic formulae alone are these monsters rendered 
harmless, and this purpose is served by the books 
of magic which are always buried with the dead. 
The world beyond is looked upon throughout as a 
dark land to the west, which, from time to time 
during the nocturnal journey of Ra, becomes 
illumined for the refreshment of the soul. More 
pleasant is the notion of the paradise (Earu or 
Aalu) of Osiris, which lies in the north or the east, 
and is like the blissful fields of the Greek Elysium. 
There, the souls lead a pleasant life, a continuation 
of their earthly occupations and joys. But beyond 
this rises religious hope to the thought of a blissful 
life for the transfigured soul which, having become 
one with Osiris, will participate in his divine being 
or shine as a star in heaven. '' As certainly as 
Osiris lives, he too will live. As certainly as Osiris 
will not be destroyed, he too will not be destroyed." 
The gods call out to the soul : " Thy transfigured 
spirit and thy power come to thee as to the god, the 
representative of Osiris. Thy soul is in thee and 
thy power behind thee. Lift thyself up and arise.'' 
To him who is thus awakened, they stretch out a 
ladder for the ascent to heaven : " The gate of 
heaven is open for thee and the massive bolts shot 
back. Thou findest Ra standing there, he takes 
thee by the hand and leads thee to the throne of 
Osiris, so that thou mayest rule over the transfig- 
ured. The servants of the god stand before thee 
and call out. Come, thou god, come, thou possessor 

ii6 



The Egyptian Religion 

of the throne of Osiris. Now standest thou there 
protected, equipped as a god, clothed with the form 
of Osiris, and thou dost what he did do among the 
transfigured and the indestructible/' (Erman, 
p. 98.) 

This bliss, however, is participated in by those 
alone who have passed through the judgment of the 
dead before the judgment throne of Osiris. The 
judgment scene has been preserved for us in a pic- 
ture: the goddess of truth leads a woman into the 
hall of judgment, at the other end of which Osiris 
sits upon his throne as judge of the dead ; above, in 
the background, are the forty-two witnesses of the 
trial; in the centre a great scale, on one pan the 
heart of the deceased, and on the other the truth 
symbolized as a feather. The gods, Horus and 
Anubis, make the test, whether the heart will not 
be found too light before truth. And the clerk- 
god, Thoth, stands behind, with all his writing 
material, to take down the result and carry his re- 
port to the judge. The 125th chapter of the Book 
of the Dead, that oldest manual of confessions, 
which at the same time contains a catechism of 
Egyptian morals, records for us what the soul has 
to say, and, according to Erman (p. 104 seq.), it 
is essentially as follows : 

** Praised be thou, great god, lord of both truths, I have 
come to thee that I may behold thy beauty: I know thee 
and I know the names of the forty-two gods who are with 
thee in the hall of both truths, who feed upon them that do 
wickedly and who drink their blood on the day of reckoning; 

117 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

I come to thee and bring the truth and drive off sin. I have 
committed no sin against men and I have done nothing which 
is hateful to the gods. I have not spoken evilly of any man 
to his superior. I have suffered no one to hunger, I have 
caused no one to weep, neither have I committed murder nor 
commanded others to murder. I have caused pain to no 
man. I have not lessened the food in the temples, neither 
have I stolen the bread of the gods nor the food of the trans- 
figured. I have not practised unchastity on the pure place 
of my native god. I have not falsified the measure of corn, 
nor the measure of length, nor the field measure, nor the 
weight of the scales. I have not stolen the milk from the 
mouth of the infant, nor have I stolen the cattle from the 
pasture, nor have I caught the birds and fishes of the gods. 
The waters of the inundation have I not hemmed. I have 
not interfered with the temple income of the god. I have 
not been eavesdropping. I have not committed adultery. 
I was not deaf to words of truth. I have not eaten up my 
heart with affliction. I have not been disdainful nor have I 
made many words. I have not blasphemed the king nor 
have I despised the god. Behold, I come to you without sin. 
I have done that which men say is satisfactory to the gods. 
I have given bread to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, rai- 
ment to the naked, and ferriage to him without a boat. I 
have been a father to the orphan, a husband to the widow, 
a shelter to the freezing. I am one who (only) has spoken 
and narrated good. I have gained my possessions by righte- 
ous means. I have given sacrifices to the gods and gifts to 
the transfigured dead. Save me, protect me. Ye will not 
accuse me before the great god. I am one of a clean mouth 
and of clean hands, to whom those who see him say wel- 
come." 

Thus, the Book of the Dead pictures, in the form 
of a confession of the soul before the seat of divine 
judgment, the moral ideal of an Egyptian who has 
honestly fulfilled his duties toward the gods and 
men. We must not be surprised that ritual and 



The Egyptian Religion 

moral duties are indiscriminately mixed together; 
in the priests' law-books of all religions, it is not 
otherwise — think of the laws of Moses, the Indian 
law of Manu, the Persian Avesta, and the others. 
In any event, we may form this judgment, that, in 
consideration of its great antiquity, the moral ideal 
contained in the Eg}^ptian Book of the Dead is one 
deserving of our highest respect. Thus, from this 
side, too, we find confirmation of the fact that the 
Egyptian religion was not poor in noble seeds of 
truth; naturally, they could not come to pure and 
powerful development because the all-too-conserva- 
tive character of the people ever held tenaciously 
to the old, naturalistic notions and customs, despite 
the attempts at betterment; and the double pressure 
of priestly hierarchy and political despotism made 
the elevation to free human culture and civilization 
most difficult. 



119 



VII 

THE BABYLONIAN RELIGION 

This religion may be followed back even further 
than the Egyptian. Its oldest historical documents 
extend back to the beginning of the fourth mil- 
lenium B.C. According to the opinion of the learned 
Assyriologist, Bezold, it would be arrogant, at the 
present day, to attempt to tell the history of this 
religion. Much as we have to be thankful to the 
industry and keenness of those learned men who 
have busied themselves for more than a half-cen- 
tury with the decipherment of cuneiform inscrip- 
tions, and valuable as are the finds which have 
resulted from the excavations in the ruins of the 
cities of Mesopotamia and are ever being made, 
we are still far from any positive knowledge con- 
cerning the origins of the Babylonian religion in 
pre-Semitic and Semitic roots, and its changes in 
the course of time. This much, however, may be 
accepted as certain: in the Babylonian, as in the 
Egyptian religion, a worship of various local deities 
of single districts and cities of the valley of the 
Euphrates and the Tigris, was fundamental. The 
combination of these deities into one polytheistic 

120 



The Babylonian Religion 

system is not at the beginning, but is the work of 
schools of priests which had been begun in the old 
monarchy and completed later, particularly after 
the union of upper and lower Babylon into the one 
kingdom ruled by Hammurabi (about 2250 B.C.). 
In this religion of a realm, again, we meet at the 
outset, as in Egypt, several triads. The highest of 
these, Anu, Bel, and Hoa, had been systematized in 
the old monarchy of Ur so that Anu ruled over 
Ijeaven, Bel over the earth, and Hoa over the sea. 
That was an artificial division, for originally the 
three existed independently alongside of one an- 
other, each one being the supreme power within the 
boundaries of his worship. Hoa, as the local deity 
of Eribu, was probably a totemistic fish-god, the 
" Cannes " of Berosus, who later became the god of 
depth, then of deep wisdom, of oracles and formulae 
of exorcism. Another triad was Sin, the moon- 
god, with his two children, Shamash, the sun, and 
Istar, the great mother of all living, the goddess of 
fertility and of love, and also of death and war 
(particularly the latter in Assyria). Later, I will 
speak of the myth which tells of her journey to 
hell. I wish to remark here, that, instead of Istar, 
Ramman is also mentioned as the third member of 
this triad. He is the lightning and rain god native 
in Assyria, who was later brought into connection 
with the sun in Hammurabi's religion of the realm. 
It must be remarked further that the Babylonian 
wisdom of the priests artifically combined the exist- 

121 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

ing popular deities with the stars, a combination 
which certainly was strange to the popular con- 
sciousness — for what people is ever well versed 
in astronomy? It is a gross error, therefore, to 
think that Istar was really the planet Venus, and 
that the myth of her descent to hell was related to 
the disappearance and appearance of the evening 
and the morning star. Such poetic interpretations, 
whether they be old or new, do not correspond to 
the original sense and deep seriousness of earliest 
religious beliefs. The fact is, rather, that the 
astrological wisdom of the priests established a 
mystical relation not closely definable between the 
five planets and the popular deities; these became 
half-way identical so that the god of war and of 
death, Nergal, was the reddish planet, Mars ; Nabu, 
the god of revelation and of priests, was the planet, 
Mercury; Marduk, the king's god, was the imperial 
planet, Jupiter; Istar, the goddess of love, was the 
lovely evening star, Venus, and, finally, Ninib, the 
god of storms and of war, was the planet Saturn. 
These five planetary deities, together with the sun 
and the moon, ruled the seven days of the week, 
which the Romans took over from the Babylonians 
and transmitted to the Occident. 

From the time of the founding of the empire by 
Hammurabi, Marduk, the local deity of Babel, cap- 
ital city of the realm, was elevated to the dignity of 
the highest god of the realm just as Amen-Ra had 
been elevated in the new Egyptian empire. This 

123 



The Babylonian Religion 

primacy of Marduk, resting primarily on a political 
basis, was ecclesiastically sanctioned by the priest- 
hood of Babel in that they converted the spring-new- 
year festival, Zalmuku, into a festival of victory of 
Marduk; the spring hymn, singing the annual vic- 
tory of the sun over the storm season and winter 
rains, was developed into an epic of creation in 
which the principal role of creator and victor over 
chaos was assigned to Marduk, the god of Babel. 

This creation epic has an especial interest for us, 
inasmuch as there are certain points of contact be- 
tween it and the story of creation told in the first 
chapter of the Bible. The myth begins : In the be- 
ginning there was neither heaven nor earth nor a 
single god, but only the waters of the ocean and 
Tiamat, the dragon of chaos (the biblical Tehom) ; 
by a combination of them the first god-pairs, and 
then the great gods and Marduk came into being. 
Now Tiamat, who saw her power jeopardized by 
them, challenged these gods to combat and then 
began the decisive struggle between the divine gov- 
ernment of the world and the elemental chaos simi- 
lar to the struggle between titans and giants against 
the Olympians in Greek mythology. But one after 
the other of the older gods attempted in vain to 
resist the fearful monster; in their dire need, they 
concluded to select Marduk as their champion and 
conveyed to him their combined power. ^' Hence- 
forward be thy power unbounded ; in thy hand be it 
to lift up and to make low; nothing can resist thy 

123 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

command; among the gods not one can withdraw 
from thy rulership." Upon this condition, Marduk 
accepts the decision of the gods, arms himself with 
a sword, a spear and a net, creates a destructive 
wind which he blows into the mouth of Tiamat, who 
had opened it in order to get air; then Marduk 
pierces her body and divides it into two halves, one 
of which he converts into the vault of heaven, as a 
receptacle for the upper waters, and locks it tight 
with bolts. Thereupon, he sets bounds for the lower 
waters and strides through the heavens as a victori- 
ous ruler. In the heavens, he marks the stations of 
the single gods (the stars), while he makes the moon 
the night light to designate the days (of the month). 
Finally, he creates men, but how they were created 
cannot be seen from the epic. The epic closes with 
this warning : " The fear of god produces benevo- 
lence. Sacrifice lengthens life, and prayer wipes 
away sin,'' — practically the essence of the Marduk 
faith. (After Jastrow, die Babyl. und Assyr. Re- 
ligion, Cap. XXI.) 

While the points of contact between this epic and 
the biblical story of creation cannot be overlooked, 
equally certain is it that the difference between them 
is greater than their relationship, so that a direct 
borrowing can scarcely be accepted; much more 
probable is the hypothesis of common Semitic sagas 
out of which the Babylonian priests, on the one 
hand, created their polytheistic epic of the struggle 
and the victory of the gods, while on the other hand, 

124 



The Babylonian Religion 

the Hebrew poet composed the sublime picture of a 
struggle-free creation by one all-powerful creating 
god. Much closer is the relationship of the Baby- 
lonian and the biblical legends which tell the story 
of the Deluge ; in the Babylonian version the hero's 
name is Sit-Napistim (Xisuthros). The god Hoa 
confides to him that the other gods, angered by 
men's sins, had decided upon their destruction by a 
deluge of waters. Acting upon the advice of his 
protecting deity, he builds the ark and loads it with 
all his possessions and with animals of every kind. 
The deluge comes simultaneously from heaven and 
from the sea. The gods themselves, in anxiety and 
terror, flee before its rage. After seven days, the 
ark rests securely on Mt. Nisir. First Sit-Napistim 
sends forth a dove which returns; then a swallow, 
but she too finds no dry ground and returns ; finally 
a raven, which returns nevermore. Sit-Napistim 
then abandons his ship and on the summit of the 
mountain offers up a sacrifice of thanksgiving, upon 
which the gods fall like flies. Old Bel, alone, is 
angry that all men have not been destroyed, while 
Istar mourns that so many living beings have died ; 
excited quarrels occur at all the meetings of the 
gods, until Ea succeeds in pacifying the combatants. 
Thereupon they are reconciled to the human beings 
that have been saved and transport Sit-Napistim to 
the paradise of the blest. 

This conclusion of the Babylonian legend is 

reminiscent of the biblical translation of pious 

125 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

Enoch; it seems, therefore, as though in the Baby- 
lonian story Sit-Napistim combines in one single 
figure the two heroes, Noah and Enoch, of old 
Semitic story. 

The biblical story of paradise, in a measure, re- 
calls the myth of the hero, Adapa, that son of Hoa, 
who had broken the wings of the south wind and 
thereby brought upon himself the anger of the god 
Anu. The latter orders this hero to appear before 
his throne and answer the charge of arrogant inva- 
sion of the divine rulership of the world. Hoa dis- 
misses his son with the advice that he do not 
partake of the food or drink that will be offered to 
him in the hall of the gods, for it is his death-meal. 
Adapa departs clad in the garb of mourning and, by 
the mediation of the other gods, succeeds in pacify- 
ing the angry Anu. Inasmuch, however, as he has 
seen secrets of heaven never shown to mortals, the 
gods decide to offer him the bread of life and the 
drink of life, and to make him one of themselves. 
But Adapa, remembering the paternal advice, refuses 
the proffered food, whereupon Anu looks on himi in 
sorrow and asks : " Why dost thou thus ? Now 
thou canst not live [forever]." Thus Adapa has 
lost the possibility of immortal life with the gods 
through his incredulity, and must return to earth. 

Here, then, as in the biblical story, immortality 
depends upon the eating of the food of life, and 
here, as there, it is lost by the fateful obedience to 
bad counsel. In the Bible, it is the demonic counsel 

126 



The Babylonian Religion 

of the snake which causes the doubt and disobedi- 
ence of the divine command, while in the Baby- 
Ionian legend, it is the deceptive counsel of the god 
himself which seals the fate of the obedient man. 
Thus we see again how common Semitic legends are 
worked out in entirely different senses on two sides. 
Finally, the myth of Istar's journey to hell, pecu- 
liar to the Babylonians, must be mentioned. In 
order to fetch the water of life for the revivification 
of her dead lover, Tammuz, the goddess descends 
into the nether world, the '' land without return." 
Through seven doors, all locked and guarded, she 
must pass. At the first, she demands admission in 
commanding tones, threatening to destroy the por- 
tals of the nether world and lead up all the dead. 
The guardian announces this to the mistress of the 
underworld, who commands that Istar be permitted 
to pass, but only according to the laws of the nether 
world. Accordingly, at each gate, one piece of 
jewelry or one garment after the other is taken 
from her. Naked, she appears before the goddess 
of death and the latter commands her demons to 
inflict upon Istar all of their diseases. The disap- 
pearance of the goddess of love from earth has this 
consequence: all conception and reproduction of 
men and cattle seems about to cease, and a general 
dying-off is imminent. Then the higher gods must 
bring their help. They send their messenger, 
Assusunamir, to the queen of the nether world with 
the strict command that Istar be suffered to depart 

127 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

unhurt. Reluctantly, the mistress of death bows 
before the command of the gods and permits the 
sick goddess to be sprayed with the waters of life; 
thus healed, she begins her return journey, recovers 
her garments and her jewelry at each of the seven 
gates, and emerges into the upper world with all 
her old-time glory. Thereupon she brings her lover, 
Tammuz, back to life with the waters of life. A 
general festival of joy, with music and song, fol- 
lows: the counterpart of the spring festival of 
Adonis and Astarte in Syria, of the Osiris and Isis 
festival in Egypt, and of the Demeter and Kore 
festival in Greece. 

Better even than all these myths, the hymns and 
penitential psalms which have become known to us 
through the decipherment of the cuneiform inscrip- 
tions serve to characterize the Babylonian religion. 
I will give you a few of these as they have been 
translated by Jastrow and Zimmern. A prayer of 
King Nebuchadnezzar to Marduk : 

"0, Eternal Ruler, lord of all, grant that the name of the 
king whom thou lovest, whose name thou hast named (called 
to the throne) may flourish as it seems good to thee. Lead 
him along the right path. I am the ruler who obeys thee, 
the creation of thy hand. Thou hast created me and hast 
entrusted me with the rulership over men. According to 
thy mercy, which thou grantest to all, O Lord, let me love 
thy highest law. Plant in my heart the fear of thy divinity. 
Grant me all that may seem good to thee, for thou art he who 
guards my life.'- 

A prayer to Istar : 

128 



The Babylonian Religion 

**It is good to pray to thee, for thou art inclined to listen. 
Thy glance is a hearing of prayer, thy utterance light. Have 
mercy upon me, Istar, proclaim my welfare. Faithfully look 
upon me. Hearken to my beseeching. If I follow thy foot- 
steps, be my progress sure. If I seize thy cord, may I possess 
joyousness. If I bear thy yoke, relieve me of my burdens. 
If I have regard to thy glance, may my prayer be heard and 
granted. If I seek thy rulership, may life and salvation be 
my portion. May the good protecting spirit which stands 
before thee be mine, may I achieve the prosperity, which 
stand to thy right hand and to thy left. Speak thou that 
my speech be heard. In health and joyousness lead me 
daily. Make my days long, give me life. May I be healthy 
and uninjured, that I may worship thy divinity. As I wish, 
may I achieve. The heavens rejoice in thee, the deeps of the 
waters shout with joy to thee. May the gods of all render 
homage to thee. May the great gods rejoice thy heart." 

A penitential prayer to Istar, with incidental 
words of the mediating priest : 

•• * I, thy slave, full of sighs, cry to thee. Accept thou the 
fervent prayer of him who has sinned. When thou lookest 
with mercy upon man, that man lives. O, almighty mistress 
of man, merciful, turning in goodness toward them, she 
hearkens to supplications.' The priest says: *His god 
and his goddess are angry at him, therefore he calls upon 
thee. Turn thy countenance toward him. Take him by his 
hand. Outside of thee there is no god to set aright.' The 
penitent says: *Look upon me truly, accept my supplication. 
How long yet, say, ere thy spirit will be milder. How long 
yet, my mistress, will thy countenance be turned away. I 
coo like a dove, with sighs am I filled,' The priest says: 
* With woe and mourning is his soul full of sighs, tears he 
weeps and breaks forth in lamentations.' " 

A penitential prayer for any god : 

**0, Lord, my sins are many, great are my transgressions. 
I know not the sin which I have committed, nor do I know the 

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Religion and Historic Faiths 

transgression. The god whom I know, whom I do not know, 
hath oppressed me; the goddess whom I know, whom I do 
not know, hath caused me pain. When I sought help, no one 
took me by the hand. When I wept, no one came to my side. 
How long, my god, my goddess, will thy anger not cease and 
thy unfriendly heart not find rest? O Lord, despise not thy 
slave. Cast into the waters of the marsh, take him by the 
hand. Turn the sin which I have committed to good and 
make the wind to carry off my transgression. Disrobe me 
of my many trespasses as of a garment. My god, my goddess, 
though my sins be seven times seven, forgive my sins. For- 
give them, and I will bow down before thee. Let thy heart 
come to rest as the heart of the mother who bore me, of the 
father who begot me." 

Recently, these penitential psalms have been some- 
what overrated, because they have been regarded as 
fully equal to those of the Bible. At bottom, they 
contain nothing more than the lively desire to be 
freed from the evil which has befallen the one pray- 
ing. That this evil is brought into connection with 
a guilt which has excited the anger of the god does 
show a movement of the moral conscience in combi- 
nation with the religious feeling of dependence, but 
it is never actually a matter of salvation from the 
sin itself, but only from its evil consequences ; there 
is no trace of moral self-searching or self -judgment, 
of a demand for inner betterment and purification. 
So it might be said that these penitential prayers do 
not essentially go beyond the realm of polytheistic 
nature-religion. This judgment is the more justi- 
fied when we recall how closely these prayers are 
related to and go over into the magicial formulae 
of exorcism which play a larger part in the Baby- 

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The Babylonian Religion 

Ionian religion than anywhere else, because they 
stand in closest relation to the astrological belief in 
fate, systematized by the priests. In all other re- 
ligions, naturally, the superstitious belief in omens 
and magic means is to be found, but only as a pop- 
ular sub-structure of the official religion, which from 
its higher standpoint rejects such naturalistic sur- 
vivals of a crude past. However, the superstitious 
belief in soothsaying and magic was an essential 
part of the priestly religion itself among the Baby- 
lonians, and the main obstacle to its elevation to 
higher ideals. 

The Babylonian priests had busied themselves 
early with astrological studies, but they had never 
achieved such extent of astronomical knowledge as 
is to be found among the Greek natural philosophers. 
Instead of observing the movements of the heavenly 
bodies in the interest of pure knowledge, they used 
their observations in order to make an arbitrary 
connection with the fates of men, and so they be- 
came the discoverers of that astrological pseudo- 
science, the delusion which weighed humanity down 
for so long a time. In their official reports, there are 
capital examples of the arbitrary fashion in which 
the astrologers made oracles out of the phenomena 
of the heavens. Once we read: Because sun and 
moon are visible at the same time on such and such a 
day, the gods will be favorably incHned to the land, 
the people peaceable, the army obedient, and the 
cattle safe in their pasture ; another time, exactly the 

X3I 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

same position of sun and moon leads to the conclu- 
sion that a gloomy period awaits the land, a strong 
enemy will destroy it, and the king will be forced 
into subjection. An eclipse of the moon on such 
and such a day of the month portends the death of 
an inimical king. On another day, it means an 
imminent war ; on a third day, an inundation ; on a 
fourth, famine ; on a fifth, miscarriages and the like. 
The astrological calendar determined accurately for 
each day of the month, on the basis of the position 
of the planets with regard to one another and to 
other stars, for what action, particularly of the 
king, it was favorable or unfavorable. It is ap- 
parent what an immense power the priesthood was 
able to exercise by the supposed knowledge of the 
decisions of heaven concerning earthly life, govern- 
mental and private. Was not Paul right when he 
characterized heathenism as " the slavery under the 
poor and weak world elements " ? But the other 
side of this spiritual unfreedom was the false free- 
dom of magic, which seeks to force the spiritual 
powers into the service of human discretion by 
means of exorcistic formulae. 

Perhaps one may say that it is just this double 
superstition, on the one side fate determined by 
signs in heaven and on earth, on the other, the 
witchcraft served by mysterious powers, which is 
characteristic of the weakness of nature-religion 
generally. On the one hand, man remains caught 
in slavish fear of fate's dark decree, and on the 

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The Babylonian Religion 

other hand, he thinks that he is able to elevate his 
own wild caprice and arbitrariness to be mistress 
over the world. Now bold, now humble, his heart is 
never at rest, as it can only be in the free surrender 
to the divine will of the good. Man had to tear 
himself loose from the bonds of nature and magic; 
he had to learn that the revelation of God was to be 
sought not only outside of himself in nature, but 
also and especially within himself. " In thy breast 
are the stars of thy fate." When man began to 
turn his gaze inward, he found, in the voice of his 
own conscience, in the feeling of his own heart for 
a noble human ideal, that revelation of God which 
is more than a mere nature power, which is the holy 
will of the good and which will elevate man through 
obedience to the freedom of the individual spirit. 
Therewith, we stand before the decisive turn in the 
history of religion, the turn from nature to spirit. 
This change, however, could only be brought about 
everywhere by single enlightened spirits who felt 
the god in their own breast stronger and recognized 
it more clearly than the masses about them. They 
were the seers through whose seeing, and the 
prophets and the wise men through whose teach- 
ings, the new beginnings of a higher ethical stage 
of development of religion went forth. From this 
time on, our discussion will deal with these prophetic 
or historical religions, and we will begin with that 
of Zarathustra. 



133 



VIII 

THE RELIGION OF ZARATHUSTRA AND THE 
MITHRA CULT 

As IN the cases of other religious heroes, the life 
of Zarathustra is richly embellished by legends. 
Before his birth the future greatness of her son was 
revealed to his mother in dreams. Immediately 
after his birth, it is said, he laughed — characteristic 
of his later courageous optimism. As a child, in- 
imical spirits sought to trap him, but in vain. As 
a youth, he withdrew from the world, and in his 
thirtieth year, on a solitary mountain, he had his 
first vision : he felt himself elevated to a place be- 
fore the throne of God and from God himself 
heard the revelation of the true religion and the call 
to be prophet of the true God. Soon thereafter, a 
demon sought to kill him, but a word of the prophet 
forced him to retire powerless. Then the highest 
of the devils, Ahriman, approached him with tempt- 
ing insinuations : " Forswear the good law of God 
and, by my grace, I will elevate thee to the kingly 
power." But Zarathustra answered : " No, I will 
not forswear the law of God, though my body, life 
and spirit disintegrate.'' 

134 



The Religion of Zarathustra 

On the basis of the similarities between these 
legends and those told of other heroes, the conclu- 
sion has been drawn that Zarathustra was not a his- 
torical person but a mythical figure. But, uncer- 
tain as the traditions are, — concerning the period 
of his appearance, the suppositions vary from the 
fourteenth to the seventh century B.C. — there can 
be scarcely any doubt that Zarathustra was a char- 
acter of history. In the Gathas, the oldest portion 
of the Avesta, the sacred writings of the Persians, 
his person and those about him appear in clear out- 
lines. He was a priest of the race of Spitam, and 
stood in close connection with the court of King 
Vistaspa; the latter and his wife and his highest 
officers were among the earliest followers of Zara- 
thustra. One of the latter became his father-in- 
law ; we learn of his sons and daughters, and a wed- 
ding song which he composed for the wedding 
feast of one of his daughters is extant. Besides 
these single features, the hymns of the Gathas fur- 
nish us with a detailed picture of the civilization of 
the people and contemporaries of Zarathustra. The 
Indo-Germanic tribes which lived in East Iran or 
Bactria, between the Hindu-Kush Mountains and 
the Caspian Sea, were, at that time, mainly settled 
farmers and cattle-raisers; by dint of hard work, 
they won their nourishment from the rough soil 
and the raw climate. They were ever in fear of the 
marauding expeditions of their nomadic neighbors, 
expeditions which often burst in upon the peaceful 

135 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

settlement of these peasants, killing the men, the 
women and the children and dragging off the cattle 
as booty. 

Thus we get a glimpse of a civilization that 
is just beginning, one which must defend itself 
against surrounding barbarians and maintain its 
existence with difficulty. Under the leadership of 
their " lying priests," and under the protection of 
their " lying gods," the Daevas, as they are called 
in the Gathas, these robber hordes undertook their 
campaigns. These Daevas are the same beings 
known to us from the oldest songs of the Indian 
Veda: they are personified nature-powers among 
whom the demon of intoxication. Soma and Indra, 
that ruffian who is nearly always drunk, that patron 
of the knights of the road, played the principal role 
— purely naturalistic gods, entirely unethical beings, 
comparable to the Baalim of Canaan. Under the 
protection of such gods, the nomadic hordes under- 
took their plundering expeditions against the peace- 
ful settlements of the peasants of Iran in whose 
midst Zarathustra lived. Ever louder rose the 
cries of the oppressed for help, cries for a protector 
on earth and in heaven. The earthly protector 
appeared in the person of King Vistaspa, who 
at this time probably established his kingly rule 
through his protection of the peaceful peasants 
against the robber bands. The priest Zarathustra 
allied himself to the king, for the oppression of his 
people struck at his heart and his keen eye saw the 

136 



The Religion of Zarathustra 

mighty contrast between those immoral, lying gods 
of the robbers and the true God, the source of " the 
best order," the protector of right and peace among 
a people, in whose name alone victory is to be won 
and permanent order established. In the Gathas, 
there is preserved for us a most vivid description of 
the call of Zarathustra: how the cry of the op- 
pressed peasants pierces the heavens; how the 
celectial hosts of spirits take counsel at the throne 
of the highest god, Ahura, as to whom the mis- 
sion of saving the people shall be confided; how 
Ahura then chooses Zarathustra and the latter ac- 
cepts the call, praying that Ahura send him the good 
spirit and give him the power for the fulfillment of 
his mission. Well he feels his own weakness as 
against the magnitude of his task, and well he 
knows the pain which the opposition of men will 
bring to him, but in confidence and obedience he 
bows in submission to the divine will : 

*'That thou art holy, O all- wise Ruler, I have seen when 
the best of spirits came to me, when by thy words I first 
was taught. Whoever gives himself to thee will suffer sorrow 
at the hands of men, but whatever thou sayest is best, that 
shall be done. I know why it goes ill with me and I make my 
complaint to thee. Look thou into it, O Lord, and give me 
joy, such as a friend offers to a friend." 

And then he goes and preaches to the people the 
God who had revealed himself to him as the only 
true one, the holy will of the good; of each one, 
he demands a decision between a faith in his God, 

137 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

who alone is salvation, and those lying gods which 
lead to destruction. That was a situation exactly 
like the one we know in biblical history when the 
Prophet Elijah, in the name of Jehovah, rises up 
against the priests of Baal and demands of the peo- 
ple that they choose between God and the Baalim, 
and no longer face both ways. Here, as there, it 
was a matter of the struggle between the naturalistic 
and the moral idea of God, hence a matter of per- 
sonal decision of each individual between the true 
and the false faith. Therewith the faith is no longer 
a simple, traditional possession and custom of the 
people, to which each one, whether he will or no, 
must surrender simply because of his attachment to 
the tribal group; here, however, faith becomes the 
personal conviction of the individual, who must 
choose between the nature-gods, the patrons of 
arbitrary and crude power, and the true God, the 
Lord of order and righteousness. Such a choice 
is a decision of the will, a free disentanglement from 
the evil powers and a solemn promise to the good 
spirit, a confession of attachment to his being and 
his will, a decision to enter his service and cooperate 
in the work for his good cause. 

The religion of Zarathustra gave first expression 
to its faith in solemn formulae of confession, and 
these, at least in sense if not literally, may be traced 
back to Zarathustra himself : '' I speak myself free 
from the evil spirit and confess myself to be one of 
the Mazda-faithful.'' " The will of the Lord is the 

138 



The Religion of Zarathustra 

law of righteousness, the reward of heaven is to be 
hoped for for those works performed in the world 
for Mazda; Ahura holds him right who supports 
the poor/V-^ " Righteousness is the best possession ; 
blessed the man whose righteousness is perfect." A 
union of the naturalistic and the moral, the two re- 
ligious view-points, can never be brought about ; be- 
tween these two opposing principles, there can only 
be perpetual struggle; the resolution of the oppo- 
sition can only lie in the hoped-for final victory of 
the good principle over the bad. Thus, as in the 
case of Elijah, the prophet Zarathustra is full of 
the liveliest sense of struggle : " Hearken not to the 
lying priests; hew them down with swords and 
utterly exterminate them." 

I think that that is the origin of the story of Zara- 
thustra. It was the need of his own people strug- 
gling at the very beginning of their civic customs 
against hordes of barbarians which brought about 
in the soul of one priest the knowledge of a deep 
difference between the crude nature-gods and the 
god of a moral world-order. Thus Zarathustra be- 
came the prophet of Ahura Mazda, that is, " the all- 
wise Lord," the one creator and preserver of all 
good and of all possessions in the natural and the 
moral worlds ; the god who is free from all arbitrary 
notions and whose nature consists in leading the 
reasonable purpose of life, the good, to its victory. 

" As the first one," prays Zarathustra, " I have 
recognized thee, as the sublime in my spirit, as the 

139 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

father of the good spirit, the true creator of the 
good, the ruler of the world and of all action." 
And Ahura answers him : " Guardian am I and 
creator, preserver am I and all-knowing, and I am 
the holiest spirit — these are my names." 

A practical monotheism is here attained, one 
which is not lowered by the fact that hosts of higher 
and lower spirits surround the throne of this god, 
who, like the biblical angels, are servants of his will. 
Foremost among these are the six Amescha Spenta, 
that is, immortal helpers ; on the one side, these are 
personified religious conceptions, such as " the best 
order," ** the good thought," " the desired justice," 
" the perfect wisdom," " the immortality," at the 
same time, they are the genies and patrons of earthly 
things, such as earth, metals, cattle and plants. In 
the second circle about Ahura come the Yazatas, 
that is the venerables; among them we find the 
various old popular gods : the genius of fire, as the 
speediest of the sons of God, then Mithra, the old 
Indo-Germanic god of light, who now became the 
mediator between God and man, the leader of souls 
and the judge in the world beyond ; this latter attri- 
bute belongs also to Sraoscha, the genius of obedi- 
ence. Beside these, in the later priestly system which 
arranged this celestial hierarchy altogether, several 
spirits of historical heroes and saints, particularly 
Zarathustra, were admitted. Finally a third circle, 
the Fravaschis; in reality this is the circle of the 
souls of men in general, then, more particularly, the 

140 



The Religion of Zarathustra 

protective spirits of the pious, forming the active 
army of Ahura in his great world-struggle. Al- 
though Ahura is holy, omniscient and omnipresent, 
he is not omnipotent because his power is hemmed 
by the " inimical spirit '' Angromainyu (Ahriman). 
This Persian devil is the spirit of darkness and of 
death, just as Ahura Mazda is that of light and of 
life. He is called the foolish and the blind who acts 
first and thinks afterward, in other words, he whose 
actions originate in chance and lack reason. He is 
the personification of everything irrational, injudici- 
ous, destructive, of all the evils in nature and the 
wickedness in humanity. He is no creature of 
Ahura, but he is not as eternal; he is not an inde- 
pendent creator, but only a destroyer of the good 
creation of Ahura. He is the cause of all actual, 
present evil in the world, but the question wherein 
the cause of him is to be found remains unanswered, 
just as in the case of the biblical devil. 

One may call this a dualistic world-view, in so 
far as the actual world is divided between the gov- 
ernment of a good god and of his wicked counter- 
part, but this dualism is not absolute, for as this 
evil spirit was not from the beginning, so he will not 
remain to eternity. The solution of the great world- 
riddle, How is the evil in god's creation to be 
explained? is not sought in theoretical speculation, 
but rather is found in a religious-teleological con- 
ception of the events in the world's history. Evil 
and sin are here, they must be reckoned with in the 

141 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

actual world, but they ought not to remain here, 
they ought to be struggled against unceasingly, and 
they will not remain here for the great world-strug- 
gle will one day end with the absolute victory of the 
good and the utter rout of the bad. The dualism 
of these two opposing principles holds only of the 
present world of time, but it had not yet been in 
that prehistorical world of pure spirits, and at the 
end of the world period of six thousand years, filled 
with that struggle whose central and turning point 
is the revelation of Zarathustra, it will not be. As 
his word of truth is now the victorious weapon of 
the champion of God against the powers of false- 
hood and of death, so three thousand years after 
him the miraculously-born savior, Saoshyant, of his 
seed, will appear somewhat like his returning alter- 
ego and waken all the dead to life. Then will the 
immense world-fire melt all the elements, and in that 
heat will all the pious painlessly be purified, the 
wicked punished by three days of torture, but not 
destroyed, for they too emerge from the fire purified, 
. while Ahriman and his demons alone will, in one 
last decisive struggle with the heavenly hosts, sufifer 
defeat and be forever exterminated. In this new 
world, then, begins an endless, blissful life of puri- 
fied creatures under the sole rulership of the good 
god, Ahura Mazda. 

True, this description of the end of all things 
occurs in a later writer, the " Bundehesch," but the 
underlying thought of a present world-struggle be- 

142 



The Religion of Zarathustra 

tween the two opposing powers, and of the final 
victory of the good god and his host, dates back, 
doubtlessly, to Zarathustra himself. That thought 
is the kernel of his religion, which, begotten itself 
by inner and outer struggles and needs, recognizes 
the struggle in God's cause as the task of human 
living; at the same time, it is the guarantee of the 
hope of the victory of the courageous champions 
who believe in the government of the good God. 

Not only concerning the end of all things in the 
world, but also concerning the fate of individual 
souls in the world beyond, the religion of Zara- 
thustra busied itself with meaningful thoughts. Ac- 
cording to the twenty-second Jasht, the soul of the 
pious one remains in the neighborhood of the body 
for three days after his decease, but even during this 
time there is the premonition of the coming joys of 
paradise. Then the soul arrives at Tschinwat, the 
celestial bridge where judgment is rendered. The 
genius of righteousness holds the scales in his hand ; 
the good deeds and the bad deeds are placed in the 
pans and weighed without respect to persons. If 
the good deeds weigh heavier, the soul may pass 
over the bridge. A whiff of paradisaic incense 
greets the soul and a blooming maiden appears, say- 
ing : " I am thy own doings, the embodiment of thy 
good thoughts, words and works, thy pious faith." 
Then, accompanied by Mithra, the soul enters into 
the threefold paradise of good thoughts, words, and 
works, and finally into Ahura's world of light, the 

143 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

world of the good spirits. The souls of the god- 
less, on the other hand, are dragged by the demon of 
death into the threefold hell and finally into the 
gloomy abode of Ahriman. 

There is no doubt that here older notions of Indo- 
Germanic animism are underlying, but in the religion 
of Zarathustra, they have been worked over in the 
sense of their moral fundamental thought, that each 
individual is responsible not only for the righteous- 
ness of his own action, but also for the truthfulness 
of his speech and for the purity of his thought. 

Looking for a moment at the ethics of the re- 
ligion of Zarathustra, we must distinguish between 
the original sound principles and the later mutila- 
tions through the mass of petty observances. As 
was said before, Zarathustra recognized that the 
task of man consisted in an active alliance with the 
good God in order to aid the cause of the good and 
to fight against all the destructive powers of evil. 
Inasmuch as all healthy living, growing and flour- 
ishing, in the world of nature and of man, belongs 
to the realm of Ahura and serves his cause, it is 
the duty of the pious not to hem life by ascetic prac- 
tice, but to aid it by industrious employment of every 
power in the work of civilization. The work of 
raising cattle and of tilling the soil was looked upon 
as particularly deserving religious performance ; 
" Who sows corn, sows holiness,'' for the fruitful 
earth belongs to Ahura and the barren earth to the 
demons. So, too, a healthy family life in which 

144 



The Religion of Zarathustra 

many children are born and brought up to be thor- 
ough men and women, was a reHgious obHgation; 
illegitimate practices were frowned upon and un- 
natural enjoyments were sins unforgivable, truly 
the work of the devil. Alongside of purity of body 
and of soul, of temperance and industry, which make 
personal life sound and thorough, the social virtues 
most highly praised were truthfulness, fidelity, and 
righteousness, beneficence and benevolence. The 
principal blasphemies which were condemned were 
lying and cheating, violation of oaths, contraction 
of debts (because it could never pass off without 
lying), greed and hard-heartedness. Truthfulness 
and fidelity were the two qualities of those Persian 
believers in the Zarathustra faith which struck the 
Greeks as especially praiseworthy. However, this 
sound ethics was badly deformed by the ritualistic 
law code of the priests as we know it in the " Vendi- 
dad," the priests' laws of the Avesta, which bears 
the same relation to the ancient Gathas that the 
priestly law in the books of Moses does to the 
prophets and the psalms. 

Merely as an example, I will cite some of this 
senseless casuistry. In order that none of the 
sacred elements be defiled, the burial or the burn- 
ing of the dead was avoided, hence the corpses were 
exposed on hills or towers to be eaten up by wild 
animals or birds; this horrible practice was prob- 
ably taken over from the Scythians. The ritual 
nonsense was rrtainly elaborated by the medium 

145 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

priests, the '* magi." There were endless injunc- 
tions as to how one must act in case he or she 
involuntarily became unclean by physical functions 
or conditions, or by contact with an unclean thing, 
particularly a dead body; for every such defile- 
ment, even of the most harmless kind, there was a 
ceremonial process of purification and atonement, 
whereto it was necessary to call the priests and they 
— this being the heart of the matter — were to be 
well paid ; in case of the refusal of such atonement 
a certain number of lashes were substituted and the 
number of these for each of the different misde- 
meanors can only be understood as the spawning of 
some mad priestly fantasy. Enough of these signs 
of a sad degeneration which that originally pure 
and sound religion and ethics of Zarathustra suf- 
fered at the hands of the Oriental priest-schools. 

I will not detail the varying fortunes of the 
religion of Zarathustra from the time when it 
became the state religion of the Persian realm and 
underwent all its political changes, to the day when 
it succumbed to the assault of Mohammedanism. 
Yet I would call your attention to the Mithra cult, 
which grew out of the Persian religion and played 
an important role as the rival of Christianity in the 
first century of our era, in the Roman Empire. As 
far back as the Avesta, Mithra, the old Indo-Ger- 
manic god of light, was one of the semi-divine 
Yazatas. He is even called the strongest of them, 
the one whom Ahura makes equally great as him- 

146 



The Religion of Zarathustra 

self, the one who is set up as the preserver of 
the whole world. With the spread of the Persian 
realm to Babylon and also, later, to hither Asia, 
there arose a mixture of religion made up of old 
Iranian beliefs, Babylonian myths, Syrian obser- 
vances, and finally, even Hellenistic speculation ; all 
of these taken together were the elements of the 
Mithra religion. It was known to the Romans as 
early as the days of Pompey in Cilicia and, in the 
centuries that followed, it spread over the whole 
Roman Empire, with Rome as its main seat. 

The kernel of the faith and forms of worship 
was Mithra as the " mediator " between heaven 
and earth. Legend tells of his birth out of a rock 
and of the adoration of the shepherds in the presence 
of the young sun-hero. This semi-identification with 
the sun-god is indicated by the legend which makes 
him the victor in a struggle with the sun-god, where- 
upon conqueror and conquered enter into a firm alli- 
ance. Best known is the legend of Mithra's sacrifice 
of the mythical bull, visualized on countless religious 
reliefs; out of the body of the bull went forth all 
herbs and plants, especially the corn for bread and 
wine — a cosmogonic myth of greatest antiquity. It 
is further narrated that, during a drought, Mithra 
burst a rock by the shooting of an arrow, and a foun- 
tain of water gushed from the fissure, a miracle simi- 
lar to that told of Moses in the desert. After a last 
meal, which he celebrates in the company of Helios, 
the sun-god, and his other comrades of battle, the 

147 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

legend makes the hero ascend in a fiery chariot to 
heaven, where he now dwells with the gods. 

Thus, Mithra is the divine messenger and medi- 
ator sprung from the deity, who participated in the 
formation of the world and who constantly pre- 
serves the world-order by his combat with its ene- 
mies; he is the divine prototype and the powerful 
assistant of battling humanity, the protector of the 
good here and their rewarder beyond. He accom- 
panies the souls of his faithful servants upon their 
dangerous journey through the seven heavenly 
spaces whose gates open only for those of the sancti- 
fied who know the sacred names and formulas. 
(This will remind you of the Babylonian myth of 
Istar's journey to hell and the Egyptian myth of 
the soul's journey with Ra through the nether 
world.) In each of these heavenly spheres, the 
soul lays aside that portion of its being which it 
had received from that particular planetary spirit; 
finally, freed from all remnants of the earth, the 
pure soul arrives in the eighth heaven where it is 
welcomed by the blessed spirits as a son who has 
returned to his father's home after a long journey. 
At the end of the world, however, Mithra (here 
taking the place of the Iranian Saoschyant) will 
come down again and resurrect men; then will he 
hold the general judgment, then will the sacrifice of 
the primeval bull be repeated ; and of its fat, mixed 
with wine, he will prepare the miraculous draught 
which shall give immortal life to the resurrected 

148 



The Religion of Zarathustra 

upon the new earth. The congregation of the 
Mithra- faithful had a complete organization; into 
seven grades of sanctity, they were divided, and 
these were named "raven," "griffin," "soldier," 
" lion," " Persian," " sun-runner," " father." The 
three lowest grades were novices ; their position was 
one of service without the privilege of participation 
in the sacraments, which privilege belonged only to 
the upper grades of the lions. At the head stood 
the fathers, and head among them, " the father of 
fathers " ; he was the grand master of all the sancti- 
fied and to him, they all owed respect. Among them- 
selves the comrades of the congregation used the 
title "brother." Acceptance into the congregation 
and entrance into the higher grades were marked by 
various acts of sanctification called " sacraments." 
Among these was immersion, which (according to 
the statement of Tertullian, the church father) rep- 
resented " a picture of the resurrection " ; there was 
also confirmation by marking the forehead of the 
believer with a mark (it is uncertain whether this 
was anointment or branding) ; there was also a 
sanctification of hands and tongue by honey ; finally, 
the communion of the sacramental meal at which 
bread and a cup (uncertain whether filled with 
water or wine) was presented and sanctified by the 
priest through a recital of sacred formulae. This 
holy meal was one partially commemorating the 
last meal of Mithra before his journey to heaven, 
and partially a means of assuming divine powers and 

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Religion and Historic F'aiths 

a guarantee of eternal life. In one Mithra liturgy 
extant, the process of sanctification which brings the 
believer into community with the god is represented 
as a symbolic-mystic dying and re-birth by which 
life is imparted and salvation completed ; the sancti- 
fied called themselves ^'reborn for eternity" (renahts 
in ceternum). Besides which, the administration 
of the sacraments was accompanied or introduced 
by castigations and dramatic scenes of terror which 
symbolized the struggle with the dark powers of 
death, whereby the courage of the candidate was 
tested. 

The acts of worship were the priests' concern, and 
the priests were chosen from the " fathers." The 
" father of fathers " was also the high priest and 
exercised a supervision over all the comrades of the 
cult in a city; there does not seem to have been 
any uniform church organization taking in all the 
congregations. The regular service of the priests 
consisted in a daily prayer, thrice repeated, to the 
sun, connected with various sacrifices and offerings 
as well as the singing of hymns with musical ac- 
companiment. There was a special service every 
week, which took place on Sunday, the day of the 
sun-god. The principal festival of the year was 
that of the renascence of the " unconquered sun- 
god " (the winter solstice from which the sun, that 
is, the day, grows again) ; this day was celebrated in 
every congregation as a sacred festival of joy. 

The attractiveness of the Mithra cult is easy to 

150 



The Religion of Zarathustra 

understand. The community of brothers gave to 
each one moral support and strengthened his cour- 
age in the struggle for existence, for did they not 
feel themselves all to be comrades of the army of 
that god who stands for and aids his brave cham- 
pions and guarantees blissful life in the world be- 
yond, through the mysterious rites? The mixture 
of nature-myths with ethical ideas and mystical 
rites was of a piece with the period of syncretism 
and of mysteries; the manly martial character, the 
heritage from their Iranian origin, appealed espe- 
cially to the Roman legions. Even the favor of 
the Emperor, sensing a support of the Caesar cult 
therein, was not missing. But this very accommo- 
dation to the manner of thinking, and the needs of 
heathen peoples and their ruler, was the weakness 
of this religious mixture, as against Christianity, 
which held its moral monotheism pure of all con- 
cessions to heathen naturalism and polytheism : not 
a mythical sun-hero, but a divine-human ideal figure 
as savior was worshipped' by Christianity, and it 
opened the portals of salvation not only to men, 
but to all, without distinction, even to women and 
children. This difference alone sufficed to make it 
appear necessary that Christianity should win the 
victory over the Mithra religion which was its rival 
through three centuries ; for how could any religion 
which excluded the women ever have conquered the 
world ? 

I will not enter into a closer comparison of the 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

two religions. In some details the parallel must 
have been apparent to you. It is still a question in 
dispute among scholars as to how far the historical 
connections and dependence on the one side or the 
other, is revealed by them, and we shall do best if 
we withhold our judgment for the present. Who- 
ever desires greater familiarity with details, I refer 
to Cumonts's excellent presentation, upon which 
this brief sketch of the Mithra religion is based. 



152 



IX 

BRAHMANISM AND GAUTAMA BUDDHA 

The Indians were the closest race-relatives of the 
Iranians about whom I spoke in the last lecture; 
their religious development, however, was of an en- 
tirely different character. In the beginning, during 
the wandering of the conquering races into the valley 
of the Indus, the Indians also were a people loving 
battle and action, loving the world and its pleasures, 
whereof the old songs of the Rig- Veda give clear 
testimony. All this changed after they had settled 
in the exuberant hot valley of the Ganges. The 
climate was enervating and paralyzing in its effect. 
Over this people, who once rejoiced in action, there 
came a weariness, an inclination to rest and con- 
templation, to dreaming and brooding. There was 
added to this the increasing strictness of the separa- 
tion of classes into closed castes : the warrior caste 
from which emerged the small generations of rulers 
who exerted a despotic sway; the priest caste who 
increasingly monopolized the public service of God, 
developing a complicated and pedantic ritual of sac- 
rificial ceremonies and prayer formulae and, by com- 
bination with the ruling nobles, exerted a paralyzing 

IS3 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

pressure upon the spiritual life of the people. In 
the life of the Indian people, there were lacking great 
common purposes and higher ideals which would 
have lent a valuable content and powerful motives 
to their acts. The result of that is always a ten- 
dency to life-surfeit, to world-weariness and to pes- 
simistic and nihilistic judgment of the world. 

Thus it was with the Indians. In many circles, 
not alone among the priests but even in the warrior 
caste, there was much brooding over the truth in 
the popular belief in God. The question was asked : 
Are not these many gods, after all, only various 
names for the divine which is one? To the ques- 
tion what this one might be, the philosophers an- 
swered : We find it in ourselves, when we disregard 
anything which is especially personal opinion and 
wish, and regard only that being which is universally 
homogeneous, unchangeable and spiritual. This 
Atman, our innermost self, is one with the self of 
the world, the world-spirit. But the priests said the 
highest in the world can only be Brahma, for (ac- 
cording to an old Indo-Germanic notion) prayer 
and sacrifice have the power to move even the gods 
as well as to hold heaven and earth together. Then 
both parties agreed that the power of prayer and 
the world-soul, the Brahma and the Atman, were 
finally one and the same divine original being. 

The priests then differentiated between this im- 
personal Brahma and the personal Brahma, the 
highest god, the personification of priestly power 

154 



Brahmanism and Gautama Buddha 

and dignity. When the question of the origin of 
the world out of this divine original being was 
asked, they answered that all particular beings are 
emanations from the original being and return 
again to him, just as the spider has its threads go 
out of itself and then draws them back into itself, 
or as the sparks fly up out of the fire and fall back 
into it. Others, however, thought that because the 
world-spirit was the only true, simple and un- 
changeable being, there could be no reality to a world 
of the many and the changeable ; such a world had 
merely a seeming existence, a dream-picture which 
the deception of Maya mirrored to our ignorance as 
though it were reality. That is the same abstract 
monism or pantheism which we find among the 
Greek philosophers of the Eleatic school (Xen- 
ophanes, Parmenides) ; such speculation naturally 
could never become popular anywhere. On the 
other hand, the naiver notion of the world, as an 
emanation from Brahma, lent itself as a connecting 
link with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls 
rooted in the belief of the people. This doctrine is 
connected with the ancient and universal animistic 
notion of the capacity of souls to find new embodi- 
ment. While the manner of reincarnation is either 
arbitrary or accidental in animistic popular faiths, 
in the Brahmanic system, it is regulated according 
to the moral law of retribution : every man has had a 
certain number of lives before his present existence, 
and everything which he now experiences, either of 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

fortune or misfortune, is the fruit of his previous 
acts in past existences, just as his present merits or 
faults are the seed out of which, later, there will 
grow for him a better or a worse existence ; for his 
soul will, in the future, enter into a higher grade of 
living being (either a more noble caste or a super- 
human being) or it will descend to one of lower 
grade, down to the lowest and vilest of animals. 
According to this, the whole of life is spun in an 
untearable net of causality, the moral linking of 
guilt and fate. Inasmuch as this linking reaches 
out beyond the present life, death itself brings no 
release; death leads but from the sorrowful pres- 
ent existence into a new and perhaps still more 
sorrowful one. Thus arises the question about 
which finally all the poetizing and the thinking of 
the world-weary Indian turns: How can man tear 
himself loose from this endless cycle of births with 
its endless change of ever-new sorrows? 

Many sought the solution in stem asceticism, rip- 
ping themselves loose from all the life of the world, 
in a withdrawal to the solitariness of the for- 
est hermit; by suppression and castigation of the 
body, they hoped to kill it and free the spirit from 
the sensual world. Others, however, thought this 
an insufficient means of salvation, beyond which the 
truly wise man could rise by a knowledge of the 
all-one being, Brahma, and of the simple seeming, 
the nothingness of particular existence, even of 
one's own self ; only he who has risen to this height 

156 



Brahmanism and Gautama Buddha 

of knowledge is forever released from the cycle of 
world-whirling. " For him who searching finds all 
beings in his own self, for him error disappears and 
all suffering is gone." Even though his external 
life does last a little while longer, as the potter's 
wheel still rolls on though it is no longer driven, so 
for him who is a '* self-conqueror/' for him who 
has once pierced the deception of Maya, there is the 
certainty that after the death of his body, his life- 
spirits can no more go forth to new births but " he 
is Brahma then, and into Brahma is he merged/' 
" As streams flow and, disappearing in the ocean, 
lose their name and form, thus saved from name and 
form the wise man enters into the one eternal 
spirit." That is the Brahman salvation, achievable 
through withdrawal from the world and the acquisi- 
tion of philosophic knowledge, naturally possible 
only to those few who are able to philosophize. 

Among the Indians who sought salvation during 
the sixth century B.C. was a young nobleman (son 
of a prince?) of the house of Sakyas in Kapilavastu ; 
he who thus appeared was Gautama, with the sur- 
name Buddha, meaning the enlightened, and he 
became the founder of the Indian religion of salva- 
tion. Because the story of his life in Indian tradition 
has such a dense mass of legends growing about it, 
recent supposition would have it that Gautama was 
not a person of history, but a mythical sun-hero 
(Senart, Kern) but that is an exaggerated skeptic- 
ism, The historical character of Gautama is as 

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Religion and Historic Faiths 

little to be doubted as that of Jesus, even though 
naturally, in both cases, that which is historical can 
scarcely be differentiated in detail from that which 
has been painted over the original picture by pious 
story-telling. I will tell you the story of the life 
of Gautama as it appears in the traditional legendary 
form, and you will be able to see for yourselves how 
much is historical and how much is simply legend. 
I am going to base it mainly on the northern Budd- 
histic biography, " Lalita-Vistara," after the French 
translation of Foucaux: as early as 65 A.D., this 
book had been translated into Chinese, and there- 
fore, without doubt, had been written before the 
birth of Jesus and, in any event, before the compila- 
tion of our Gospels. This is to be noted because 
of the remarkable points of contact between the 
Buddhistic and the Gospel legends. 

The biography of Gautama begins before his 
birth with his heavenly pre-existence. It tells how 
the " great man '' existing in heaven listened to the 
urging of the gods and decided to become a savior 
of men; he would go down to the world of earth 
and be born of woman. He chose as his mother 
the pious Queen Maya, the wife of King Suddho- 
dana of Kapilavastu. It is further told that this 
woman took leave of her husband for a period of 
time and for the sake of pious practices retired into 
solitude. Then it occurred that, while adorned 
with flowers and resting in a grotto, she dreamed 
that she saw the heavenly Buddha in the shape of 

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Brahmanism and Gautama Buddha 

a white elephant enter into her body. She told this 
dream to her husband and he consulted the inter- 
preters of dreams concerning it ; the latter answered 
that either a great prince or a savior of the world 
was about to be born. Ten months after this 
dream, the spotless and unspotting Maya gave birth 
to a son who immediately after his birth cried, with 
mighty voice : " I am that which is the most sublime 
and the best in the world, and I will make an end 
of all suffering." Then came the hosts of the 
heavenly spirits and greeted the new-born savior; 
the earth trembled, heavenly lights appeared, the 
deaf heard and the blind saw, and the pangs ceased 
for those in hell. At about the same time, the pious 
Asita, who dwelt as a hermit in the Himalayas, 
noticed a remarkable sign in heaven, which denoted 
that a great king had been born as a savior ; he came 
down to Kapilavastu, found the infant in the royal 
palace, and by the mysterious sign recognized that 
there had appeared in him "the great man from 
heaven." This seeing, he wept. When asked the 
reason of his sorrow, he replied : " This one will 
teach the law which has virtue for its beginning, 
middle and end, but I shall not live to see his work 
of salvation, therefore do I weep." When the boy 
Gautama grew up he put his teachers to shame by 
his wonderful knowledge; in his early years he de- 
voted himself to pious contemplation. On one occa- 
sion, at a spring festival where the King was wont 
to sink the first furrow with a golden plow, the boy's 

159 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

nurse, while gazing at the spectacle, forgot about the 
boy, and lost him from her sight. After a long 
search, his father found him sitting under a fig tree 
whose shadow remained unmoved from over him 
during the entire day ; round about him sat the wise 
men, with whom the boy was discussing spiritual 
things. The father questions him in surprise, and 
Gautama answers : " My father, put aside the 
plowing and seek the higher " (seek higher pos- 
sessions). But then the boy does return to the city 
with his father, accommodating himself in externals 
to the customs of his environment, he is inwardly 
busy with the thoughts of his future mission of sal- 
vation. Of the further youth of Gautama only this 
is told: that he took part in all the joys of the 
court; that he was the superior of all his comrades 
in knowledge and arts, and that he won his wife by 
a victory in the games. When his wife presented 
him with a son, he is said to have cried out, at his 
birth : " This is a new and strong bond which I shall 
have to break." Even now there rested upon him 
the feeling of the vanity of all this worldly activity. 
The particular occasion was scarcely necessary by 
which, according to the legend, his determination to 
withdraw from the world was settled; the legend 
says that, while on a pleasure journey, Gautama met 
successively an old and infirm man, a man stricken 
with mortal disease, a dead man, and a hermit — at 
this sight of humanity, Gautama was overcome by 

the woe of the world. 

i6o 



Brahmanism and Gautama Buddha 

With epic breadth and many a pathetic scene, the 
legend goes on to describe his execution of the 
" great decision of renunciation." Parents and 
friends and wife labored in vain to hold him back, 
but all their pleading made no impression. In the 
dead of night, he bade his sleeping wife and child a 
silent farewell. Mounted on a horse, accompanied 
by only one servant, he left the city secretly. Soon 
he sent back the horse and the servant and exchanged 
his princely garments for a beggar's dress. At first, 
he followed the studies of two Brahmanic teachers, 
but their instruction gave him no satisfaction. After 
two years, he left them and began an independent 
life as a penitent; thereupon, five other penitents 
joined with him. During five years, he lived a life of 
strict asceticism and went so far in self-castigation 
that he was close on to death. Then he recognized 
that this, too, was not the right way ; he gave up the 
life of asceticism, he ate and drank again like other 
human beings and his former comrades and disciples 
looked upon him as a renegade and deserted him. 
Thus he stood entirely alone in the world, separated 
from his family, from his teachers, from his pupils, 
alone, and with the burning question in his heart: 
How can I become free from the sorrows of exist- 
ence? This condition of a lonesome, doubting, 
seeking and struggling soul is visualized by the 
legend in dramatic scenes of demonic temptations: 
Mara, the prince of pleasure and of death, tries by 

cunning of every kind to divert the saint from his 

i6i 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

path. First, he had the frenzied powers of the ele- 
ments, the storm-winds and the waters, the fire and 
the rocks, fall down upon him, but at the feet of 
Gautama, their weapons changed into garlands of 
flowers. Then the wicked one tried all his weapons 
of pleasure. First, he sent his voluptuous daughter 
to lead the saint astray by her charms, but, shame- 
facedly, she had to confess that his virtue was 
unconquerable. Finally, the greatest temptation: 
Mara promises him the highest earthly power and 
rulership if, in return, he gives up his unattainable 
spiritual goal. But Gautama pushes him aside with 
the words, " Though thou be the lord of pleasure 
thou art not the lord of truth, the knowledge of 
which I shall attain despite thee." 

Immediately after this temptation, the legend says 
Gautama experienced the decisive hour of his en- 
lightenment. Under a fig tree, lost in quiet contem- 
plation, the light of knowledge burned within him. 
He recognized the four fundamental truths upon 
which salvation rests : ( i ) , All life is suffering, for 
it is a constant desire that is never stilled, a seek- 
ing of what never can be attained, a possession 
constantly in fear of being lost; (2), The cause 
of the suffering does not lie outside of us, but 
within us, in our thirsting for pleasure, for life, for 
power; (3), Salvation from suffering consists in the 
suppression of this thirst, of the will to live, in self- 
conquest, in the " extinction " of desire. Nirvana; 
and finally, (4), The way to this goal is that holy 

162 



Brahmanism and Gautama Buddha 

path of eight parts whose names are " right behev- 
ing/' " right determining/' " the right word," " the 
right deed/' '' the right striving/' " right living/' 
" right remembering/' '' right abstraction " ; we will 
later see what this means. 

Through this revelation, Gautama became the 
enlightened, the Buddha; now he had the certainty 
that he had escaped the blissless cycle of constant 
births to sorrowful existence. He spent fifty days 
more on the sacred spot where the illumination had 
come to him. Much in doubt, he weighed care- 
fully whether he should hold the saving truth for 
himself alone or proclaim it to all men, whose 
coarse sense, shrouded in the night of earthly 
activities, would scarce be able to see the deep mys- 
terious truth. Then did the gods themselves ap- 
proach him and warn him of little courage and of 
much doubt, that mercy for the woe of men de- 
manded that he proclaim the saving truth; thus 
emboldened, he decided to teach, before all the peo- 
ple, the way to salvation. 

He experienced his first success in Benares where 
he found his five comrades of the penitential period 
of his life; they approached him with distrust even 
now, but they permitted themselves to become con- 
verted when he taught them that the life of bodily 
castigation was just as mistaken as the life of pleas- 
ure, but that the right life was the middle path of 
inner self-conquest built upon the knowledge of 
those four cardinal truths. Thereupon Buddha 

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Religion and Historic Faiths 

preached at Benares before all the people and 
wandered about the entire land (the Province of 
Magadha) preaching. Everywhere he had great suc- 
cess. Rich and poor, learned Brahmans and simple 
people from among the mass of the wretched and 
the heavy-laden, hearkened to his preaching of sal- 
vation, and some joined him as disciples while others 
became his followers. After he had gathered sixty 
disciples about him, he sent them out one by one, 
as wandering preachers : " Go forth for the profit of 
the many, through sympathy for the world, preach 
the glorious doctrine of a perfect and a pure life.'' 
From among his disciples, legend has selected one 
exemplary pair called the disciples of the right and 
of the left, the one superior in wisdom, and the 
other in miraculous power; also a favorite disciple, 
Ananda, a relative of Buddha, of whom it is said 
that he had heard most and best remembered what 
he had heard. In the circle of the disciples not 
even Judas was missing; it was Dewadatta whom 
the wicked one used to insinuate himself into the 
circle of the disciples and cause the downfall of 
Buddha. We learn, also, of disputations with 
Brahman and ascetic opponents, and once when 
they challenged Buddha to the performance of mira- 
cles he made this reply : " I do not teach my pupils 
that they should perform miracles before the people 
with supernatural power, but I do teach them this : 
Live so that ye hide your good works and confess 
your sins.^ However, this did not prevent the 

164 



I 



Brahmanism and Gautama Buddha 

pious poetry from telling of the most remarkable 
miracles performed by Buddha in order to shame 
his enemies, — poetry intended for the edification of 
the faithful but of no further interest for us. 

When in his eightieth year, after forty-five years 
of activity as a wandering preacher (about 480 B.C.), 
Buddha felt that his end was near he gathered his 
disciples about him and admonished them : '' Be 
vigilant unceasingly, walk ever in holiness, deter- 
mined ever and well-prepared, preserve your spirit! 
He who wanders ever without swerving, faithful to 
the word of truth, he makes himself free from birth 
and death, he forces his way through to the goal of 
all suflfering.'^ He asks of them that they ask him 
if anything in his teaching still be dark to them. 
When all of them are silent and.Ananda declares 
that not one of them has the slightest doubt about 
Buddha's teaching, he speaks his last words : " All 
that is perishes; with zeal work your salvation.'^ 
Thereupon Gautama entered into Nirvana, a storm 
arose and the earth shook in his parting hour, 
and when his corpse was lifted upon the decorated 
funeral-pyre, it caught fire and burned of itself. 

Even before Buddha died, a great and growing 
congregation had gathered about him. Why this 
great success? Answer: He preached differently 
from those learned in the sacred writings and the 
ascetics; he did not seek the path of salvation in 
learned speculations concerning the world-spirit, 
nor in unnatural self-castigation, but the one thing 

165 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

needful for all and possible to all, he held to be the 
moral self-conquest and the unselfish benevolence 
toward all, out of which the true knowledge comes 
of itself. He did not deny the Brahman gods nor 
give up the doctrine of transmigration of souls, nor 
do away with the differences of caste, but he did 
render valueless the priestly ceremonial service, the 
school learning, the authority of the Veda and the 
separating differences of the castes, by establishing 
as fundamental, moral purity and goodness. This 
building up of something new, whereby that which 
is old falls of itself, is the method of all successful 
prophets. 

Although Buddha did not wish to be a social re- 
former, as has often been thought, yet indirectly he 
did become one by making caste religiously unim- 
portant. He said : " My law is a law of grace for 
all, my law makes no difference between the high 
and the low, the rich and the poor ; as water purifies 
all and fire consumes all and the heavens have space 
for all." Naturally, Buddha had to experience that 
among his disciples the rich were but few while the 
poor flocked to him in hosts. Hence, his saying: 
" It is hard to be rich and learn the way (to salva- 
tion)." "The poor man fills the beggar-cup of 
Buddha with a handful of flowers while ten thou- 
sand bushels full from the rich man cannot fill it ; 
through the whole night the lamp of the poor woman 
burns, while the lamps which the rich man gives 
go out." On one occasion Ananda, his disciple, 

i66 



Brahmanism and Gautama Buddha 

met a girl of the most despised class of the Tschan- 
dalas, at a well and asked her for a drink of water ; 
she is afraid to give it to him for fear a gift from 
her hand will make him unclean, but he says : *' My 
sister, I ask not after thy caste or thy family ; I beg 
water of thee if thou canst give it to me," She 
gives him the water and Ananda takes her .as the 
first woman in the new congregation. With this 
ethical and universal side to the salvation-way, the 
form of Buddha's preaching corresponds. In pub- 
lic places, he makes addresses and holds converse 
with the mob, not concerning theological problems 
or questions of priestly ritual, but concerning the 
one question which was near to all their hearts: 
How can 1 become blest ? concerning which he spoke 
in simple proverbs and in pictures and parables 
easily understood by all. For instance, he spoke 
of the healer who, in order to heal a poisonous 
wound must give man pain when he draws out 
the arrow, but then heals the wounds by cura- 
tive herbs; or, again, of the congregation which 
he likens to the sea wherein costly pearls and 
gruesome monsters are close together, and in which 
all streams disappear without distinction. Again: 
" As the farmer must wait for the sprouting of his 
seed and can do no more than lead the water, so 
must the disciple wait in patience for the time of 
pure salvation; meanwhile keeping his life disci- 
plined and pure. As the lotus flower rises immacu- 
late from the waters of a marsh, so can the saint 

167 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

from the impurity of the surrounding world. As 
the deep sea is quiet and clear, so is the peace of the 
wise man hearkening to truth." 

In conclusion, a few beautiful sayings from the 
Dhammapada, a collection of sayings comparable 
to our Sermon on the Mount : 

**Man gathers flowers and inclines toward pleasure: as 
the floods of water pour over a village in the night, so death 
comes on him and hurries him away, the destroyer in his 
power forces him of insatiable desire. Out of joy, sorrow 
and fear are born ; out of love, sorrow and fear are born : he 
who is saved from rejoicing and from loving [the attachment 
to perishable possessions], for him there is no pain, whence 
could fear come? The treasure that is buried in a deep 
cavern may be lost, but the treasure that no thief can steal 
is gathered through love and piety, temperance and self- 
restraint. The fool chases after vanity, he is deceived, while 
the wise man holds seriousness to be his richest treasure. 
Hate is never overcome by hate, that is an eternal rule. 
Whatever an enemy does to an enemy, a spirit turned toward 
doing evil makes the evil only worse. Though the victor in 
battle may conquer a thousand times thousands, yet is he 
the greatest victor who conquers himself. Anger should be 
overcome by goodness, lying by truth; and to him who 
begs something should be given of the little which one has: 
thus does one enter into communion with the gods. We 
live happily, freed from hate in the midst of haters, free from 
attack in the midst of the heart-sick, free from care among 
the anxious, happy though we cannot call anything our own. 
Thus do we become like the blessed gods." 

Finally, a few polemical sayings against the ex- 
ternality of the Brahman service of works : 

**Not the abstinence from fish and meat, not going naked 
and cutting the hair, not wearing rough garments, and not 
bringing sacrifices for Agni, can make him pure who is not 

l68 



Brahmanism and Gautama Buddha 

free from self-deception. Thou fool, what help is the cutting 
of hair, or the garment of skins? Your low desires are in 
Ip-ou and you make your outside clean. He who suffers re- 
proaches without guilt bears chains and molestation, he who 
prepares a strong army for himself by patience of the many, 
he it is whom I call a Brahman. He who has overcome the 
wicked path of error, he who has forced his way through the 
waves and reached the shore, rich in contemplation, freed 
from desire and hesitation, he who is liberated from existence 
and has found Nirvana, him do I call a true Brahman." 

These sayings are all quoted after the transla- 
tion of Rhys Davids's Buddhism and Oldenberg's 
Buddha. 



169 



X 



BUDDHISM 



In my last lecture, I followed the legendary tra- 
dition in telling of the life of Gautama Buddha, and 
by a number of examples, I tried to show you the 
popular manner of his preaching. Now we must 
enter a little more in detail into the important funda- 
mental thoughts of his doctrine, then into the 
organization of his congregation, and finally into 
the ecclesiastical development of the Buddha re- 
ligion in India and in other lands. 

The four underlying truths on which Buddha's 
teaching rests have been mentioned. They are: 
(i) That all life is suffering; (2) Concerning the 
cause of suffering; (3) Concerning the dissipation 
of suffering, and (4) Concerning the way to the 
end of suffering. The first, that all life is suffer- 
ing, was practically conceded from the beginning 
by the world-weary Indian, and it serves as the 
varied theme of countless sayings and pictures. 
But wherein does the cause of the suffering lie? 
Primarily in the " thirst " for pleasure, power, life 
and happiness. But upon what does this insatiable 
desire depend? That is explained by the teaching 

170 



Buddhism 

of " the causal connection of events." The last 
link in this chain is '' not-knowing," namely, the 
worthlessness of all life and the non-reality of the 
I; out of this not-knowing originate the desires 
C' tendencies of mind," Rhys Davids), out of them 
consciousness, out of that corporeity, then senses 
and objects, contact and feelings, thirst and cling- 
ing (to the objects), then (new) birth, age and 
death in one endless return by way of this cycle. 
This psychological deduction is not quite clear (it 
might be compared to Schopenhauer's teaching 
that individuation originates in unconscious will 
and therewith the objectivation of the will in con- 
sciousness). In any event, this much can be recog- 
nized as the essential sense, that the desire which is 
rooted in the not-knowing is the cause of the em- 
bodiment of the consciousness in ever-new forms of 
existence, wherewith the '^ how " of this future be- 
coming is always conditioned by the nature of the 
preceding desire. And therein consists the law of 
causality governing the world-process, the one un- 
conditioned thing in this world of all-conditioned 
eventuation. 

As the Brahman saw but the persistent Being in 
all Becoming, so the Buddhist saw in all seeming 
being only the constant becoming; it is the same 
opposition which we find in Greek philosophy of 
the Eleatics (Parmenides) to- Heraclitus : in the 
former the being without becoming, in the latter 
becoming without being. This all-governing law 

171 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

of causality, however, is not a personal providence ; 
there is no such thing here, for Buddha will have 
none of the world-spirit of the Brahmans and the 
popular gods; though he does not deny them, they 
have no more religious importance for him than the 
gods of Epicurus. But we must not think here of 
a blind power of fate, a Moira, for it is not an 
external law, not a strange power which rules over 
men, but it is only the continuous power of man's 
own action, his " karma." This necessity, accord- 
ing to which each one reaps what he has sown, 
perhaps, may be best compared with the law of 
" moral order " in the sense of Fichte's philosophy. 
Naturally one presupposition seems inevitable, that 
he who in a future existence receives the reward 
for his deeds, either in the present or in previous 
existences, must be the same one who was the doer 
of those former deeds; in other words, that there 
must be accepted a continued existence of the soul 
as the persistent subject of the doing and the 
suffering in the various lives. But the existence 
of a persistent, substantial soul, in the change of 
its conditions, is the very thing most emphatically 
denied; what we call soul does not exist in reality, 
according to Buddhistic teaching which seems to go 
back as far as Gautama himself. But it is merely 
a semblance, a name for the temporary grouping of 
five elements (Skandhas) namely, corporeity, feel- 
ings, ideas, desires, and consciousness. Behind 
this group of phenomena or conditions, there is no 

172 



Buddhism 

substance, no perpetual I. Various pictures are used 
in order to visualize this thought : as wagon is only 
the name for the combination of the various parts 
which, grouped together, form a wagon, so Soul is 
only the name for the grouping together of the five 
elements just named; again, the soul resembles a 
flame which seems to be an existing thing, but 
which, in reality, is only the continuous process of 
ever-new combustibles being consumed; again, the 
soul is like a stream whose semblance of being 
consists in a perpetual coming and going of ever- 
new waves. These two pictures last mentioned are 
like those used by Heraclitus (Panta rei). 

This, then, is the Buddhistic doctrine of the soul 
which is expressly put forward as one of the 
cardinal truths, the not-knowing of which belongs 
to the supreme illusions, to be given up upon enter- 
ing into the path of salvation. Evidently this 
question comes up : If there be no real soul, how can 
there be a transmigration of souls? How can the 
next life-course be a retribution for the actions in 
the present life-course if it is no longer the same 
subject who acted before and then receives the re- 
ward? The Buddhists themselves declare that to 
be an inconceivable mystery, and, in fact, there is no 
solution, not even by the analogy to two genera- 
tions, of which the second, although it consists of 
entirely different subjects, still enters into the her- 
itage of the rewards and punishments of the first. 
As a psychological explanation, one could only say 

173 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

that the difficulty originates in a colHsion of two 
different kinds of motives. The one is the thought 
of retribution, not in the external setting of a 
judicial distribution of reward and punishments, 
but in the deeper form of the inner connection of 
seed and harvest. This deep true thought clothed 
itself for Buddha in the traditional notion of the 
transmigration of souls. On the other hand, the 
ax was to be put to the root of man's egotistic de- 
sire for happiness by the knowledge of the illusion 
of an independent I ; the practical demand for self- 
lessness clothed itself in the theoretical form of the 
denial of any real self. These two motives enter 
into an opposition logically difficult to harmonize, 
but they do combine in the common aim at ethical 
self-control. 

With that we come to the further question of the 
" way of salvation." Here we must differentiate 
between the general way, the elementary or lay 
morals, and the particular way of him who is pro- 
gressing to perfection, the morals of the monks. 
The former contains beautiful features, universally 
valuable, particularly its heartiness and purity, its 
unselfishness and humane spirit. Not external 
castigation or ritual works, but purity of mind from 
delusion and passion have the emphasis. " Each 
one is the cause of his own suffering and becomes 
free from it through himself; purity and impurity 
are matters for each individual himself ; no one can 
make another pure " — a principle which recalls 

174 



Buddhism 

Kant's autonomy. In the previous pages I have 
mentioned other beautiful sayings, such as that of 
self-conquest being the greatest courage and of the 
conquest of hate through love, of lying by truth. 
The duties are summed up in ten commandments, of 
which the first five hold unconditionally and the 
other five are recommended merely as means of 
assistance to virtue. They are : ( i ) , Destroy no 
life; (2), Take no strange property; (3), Do not 
lie; (^), Drink no intoxicating drinks; (5), Ab- 
stain from all illegal sexual intercourse; (6), Do 
not eat at the wrong time; (7), Use no wreaths or 
salves; (8), Sleep on a hard couch; (9), Avoid 
dances, music, and plays; (10), Own no gold or sil- 
ver. Besides these, the layman should celebrate 
the three monthly holy days by fasting and by benev- 
olence to the people of the order; also hold 
father and mother in honor and engage in an honest 
business. 

This ethics for the laity is only a preliminary to 
the " noble path of salvation '' which leads to sanc- 
tity and to Nirvana. In order to enter upon this 
path, one must become a monk. For such a one, 
the commandments of the lay ethics become more 
strict. The counsels given in the last five com- 
mandments become obligatory ; the commandment 
against illegal sexual intercourse becomes a com- 
mand to abstain from all sexual intercourse ; private 
ownership altogether is not permitted, but the monk 
must beg all of his nourishment ; these are the well- 

175 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

known monastic oaths of celibacy and voluntary 
poverty. The life of a monk, however, is not in 
itself perfection, but merely the way thereto, like 
a protecting wall behind which he who is striv- 
ing for perfection is protected against the assaults 
and dissipations of the world. The final and really 
decisive point does not lie in any external conduct, 
but in the inner work of " right thinking and right 
self-contemplation/' 

Such pious meditation is accurately described and 
four grades of the same are differentiated, but the 
boundary lines between them are not fixed. The 
first of these is the piercing of the naive illusions of 
the natural man ; then comes the suppression of all 
sensual and selfish affects; then complete apathy, 
and finally a kind of ecstatic consciousness or dis- 
appearance of all definite ideas in a dreaming 
consciouslessness (which is the summit of the con- 
templation in neo-Platonism) . This abnormal condi- 
tion, in some degree an auto-hypnotism, does not 
hold as the rule, but is rather the passing excep- 
tion. The rule, however, for the highest grade 
of meditation is absolute peace which is no longer 
moved by external stimuli or inner struggle, in 
which a full peace and therewith the desired bliss, 
the Nirvana, is attained. The wise man who has 
reached this stage is the saint; for him all desire is 
dead and therewith the root of all new births is 
killed. Nirvana is not the extermination of life but 
rather of the desire or will to live ; but where this is 

176 



Buddhism 

killed down to the root, there the cause of new 
incarnation is removed, hence the certainty of the 
complete cessation of individual existence after 
death — at least this must be considered the logical 
consequence of the above-described doctrine of the 
soul and of Karma; how far that conclusion was 
drawn is questionable. That Nirvana in any event 
is a soul condition of peace, of bliss, attainable here 
below, is apparent from many passages ; for instance, 
" the disciple who has laid aside all pleasure and 
desire, he who is rich in wisdom, he has attained 
here below salvation from death, rest, Nirvana, the 
eternal place/' Into the mouth of one of the disci- 
ples of Buddha this saying is put : " I do not ask for 
death nor do I ask for life; I wait until the hour 
comes as a servant who expects his reward with 
conscious and with wakeful spirit." 

The question whether all is over after death, for 
that saint who has already attained Nirvana, is said 
to have been asked of one of the first pupils of the 
master, but the report says that he refused to answer 
it because a knowledge thereof is of no service for 
salvation. The positive spirits of the congregation 
knew that the consequence of the teaching of the 
unreality of the soul would lead to a denial of the 
further existence of the saint, but it never became 
the official doctrine. The stage at which they 
rested was this: that nothing concerning the mat- 
ter had been revealed; the direct statement that 
after death the saint is no more was censured as 

177 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

unchurchly thinking. This reticence of decision 
may be construed in favor of those for or against 
it, but this much is clear, that the rehgious desire 
was merely for salvation from the suffering of tran- 
sitoriness; v^hether beyond this there v^as any such 
thing as positive being or whether it was simply a 
not-being remained undecided, a matter of religious 
indifference. If we add to this that the logical con- 
sequence doubtless leads to a non-existence after 
death, the judgment is justified that this salvation is 
only negative, a liberation from the evil of the 
world without substituting any positive good. This 
is explainable by the life-weariness of the Indian for 
whom existence itself is only a source of torture, for 
whom the positive purposes of life — acting, striving 
and hoping, — are wanting; with such pure pur- 
poselessness of life, the balance of his weal and woe 
must naturally yield a negative result. Hence the 
negative quality of this doctrine of salvation which 
corresponds to the more negative and passive char- 
acter of the ethics. Its motive is not so much the 
recognition of the right and value of human person- 
ality as the indifference to all values, the condemna- 
tion of individual existence itself as the source of 
all evil; hence there is sympathy with suffering 
beings, but there is no energetic activity ; there is the 
killing off of selfish instincts, but not the building 
up of a higher self. 

There is a negative but not a positive content 
in this ideal of life. Buddhistic ethics may be 

178 



Buddhism 

summed up in the biblical words " love not the 
world, for the world with its joys perisheth." In 
Buddhism, this remains the final position, while the 
Bible passes on from negation : " But he who does 
the will of God, he remains for all eternity," that is, 
whoever has made the positive purpose of the whole, 
the general highest good, content and purpose of 
his life, for him life possesses a super-temporal value 
and, therewith, the guarantee of an imperishable 
permanence, even though that is beyond our con- 
ception. 

Another question arises in connection with this 
negative quality of the Buddhistic object of salva- 
tion. The Buddhist worships his master as the 
bearer of salvation and its exemplar, the omniscient, 
the holy and the perfect ; but as such, he has really 
entered into Nirvana, actually exists no longer, or 
if he does, it is only in that mysterious resting being 
which has no longer any connection with the world 
of time. So the Buddhistic congregation has a his- 
torical founder who, although he is the object of 
their grateful worship and edificatory contempla- 
tion, is not really a substitute for the belief in God 
which is lacking. He has not the lasting power of 
salvation, to which the pious spirit might lift itself 
in confidence and hope. 

The religious need of the Buddhistic church was 
met, in this case, in remarkable fashion. The doc- 
trine soon appeared by which the coming of Gau- 
tama Buddha was only one of countless Buddha 

179 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

appearances which are repeated in every age of the 
world when human suffering has need of him. Be- 
fore Gautama, the founder of the congregation, 
there are supposed to have been twenty-four Bud- 
dhas, and concerning some of them both names and 
legends are reported. After Gautama, other Bud- 
dhas will follow, and concerning these future 
Buddhas, it is believed that they do now exist in 
heaven as chosen candidates for the Buddha dig- 
nity. The next of these, Maittreya, so runs the 
tradition in the Lalitavistara, was chosen by Gau- 
tama before he became a man, and was designated 
as his successor in the mission of salvation (as 
" Bodhisattva ''). His picture was early placed 
in the Buddhist church at Ceylon alongside that of 
Gautama, as an object of worship. Later, other 
pre-existing Bodhisattvas in heaven were added to 
Maittreya, spirit of the good. Such were particu- 
larly Mantusri, the spirit of wisdom, and Avaloki- 
tesvara, the spirit of power and providence. The 
spirits of good, wisdom and power are evidently 
nothing more than the attributes of the one highest 
spirit whom we call God, made independent (just 
as the Persian archangels, or Amschaspans, stand 
for the representatives of the qualities of Ahura 
Mazda). It cannot be wondered at then, that in 
a later development of the north Buddhistic church, 
all of these Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are inter- 
preted to be the forms of appearance of one original 
Buddha who is considered " the self -existing, eter- 

i8o 



Buddhism 

nal being, infinite light and life/' that is to say, God 
in the full sense. It cannot really be said, then, 
that Gautama Buddha, the historical founder of the 
congregation, became a god in the belief of his 
congregation; but he is held to be the latest and 
most important appearance of the eternal spirit of 
salvation which had revealed itself before him and 
will reveal itself after him repeatedly in new forms. 
Involuntarily, we recall the Johannine teaching of 
the divine Logos which, even before its appearance 
in Jesus, had revealed itself as the light to men, and 
after Jesus continued to reveal itself in the spirit of 
the congregation, the Paraclete, which finds in the 
apostles and the prophets instruments of its contin- 
ued revelation. Such a similarity in the formation of 
two doctrines, built up independently of one another, 
might well serve as testimony for the thinking stu- 
dent of history that we are here dealing not with 
an arbitrary play of fantasy, but with a deep 
development of religious series of thoughts, rooted 
in the nature of the religious consciousness and of 
natural needs. 

These, then, are the main teachings of Buddhism. 
I can only indicate, in brief, its further formation 
and development as a church. From what has 
already been said, it is clear that the monks consti- 
tute the kernel of the Buddhistic church, but Bud- 
dhism is not exclusively a religion for monks, for 
the Buddha belief, from the beginning, offered con- 
solatory and educative motives to that congregation 

i8i 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

of laymen which attached itself to the members of 
the order and formed the wider circle. Gautama 
Buddha himself broke the first ground not only for 
the spread of his teaching, but also for the organiza- 
tion of the monk class. He prescribed certain 
rules of discipline, but later there was many a dis- 
pute as to how far these strict regulations had to be 
obeyed and which of them could be traced back by 
tradition to Buddha himself and which to his first 
pupils. With the growing wealth of the monas- 
teries, there came lively debates and controversies as 
to whether the commandment which forbade all 
possession of money had to be taken seriously, a 
controversy similar to that known to us in the his- 
tory of Christian monastic orders, especially the 
Franciscans. Concerning acceptance into the orders, 
this much may be said, that children were admitted 
into the novitiate where the parents had given per- 
mission; actual acceptance and consecration could 
only take place after the twentieth year, and was 
dependent upon the consent of the congregation. 
Among the monastic oaths, besides those ol chastity 
and poverty, was one forbidding the proclamation 
of false miraculous powers. This was done be- 
cause the power of performing miracles was 
thought to be connected with full saintliness and 
so some one might perhaps pretend to miraculous 
power in order to obtain that dignity during life. 
In the good weather periods of the year, the monks 
wandered about with their beggar's pots which they 

182 



Buddhism 

were permitted to show only without making any 
request. In the rainy season, they gathered to- 
gether in enclosed spaces ; later, in great monasteries 
founded by rich patrons and surrounded by beauti- 
ful parks. In them they remained together for 
three months of each year, and during this time, 
there were regular gatherings — they can scarcely be 
called services of God — for pious discussions and 
for confession. On such occasions all the rules for 
moral duties and monastic discipline were read, and 
at each point, he who was conscious of any guilt 
was obliged to confess the same openly; in case of 
heavy guilt, expulsion from the order was the pen- 
alty, and in cases of unimportant infractions a 
lighter sentence of repentance was imposed. Any- 
one was free to resign voluntarily and therewith, he 
became a simple lay-brother without becoming an 
enemy of the order. The acceptance of nuns into 
the narrower circle of the order was reluctantly 
agreed to by Buddha himself. Ananda, the favorite 
disciple, had championed them and, despite the mas- 
ter's grave doubts, made the beginning. The needs 
of the layman were cared for by the sermons of 
wandering monks and the house to house care for 
souls which they connected with their begging ex- 
peditions. As for the rest, the w^orship of the Bud- 
dhist people consisted mainly in an adoration of 
relics of Buddha, in pilgrimages to the sacred 
cities of his earthly life, in sacrificial offerings 
to the images of saints (flowers and incense 

183 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

especially being used) and in donations to the 
monasteries. 

In the history of the Buddhist church, the reign 
of the powerful King Asoka (270-233 B.C.) plays 
the same role as that of Constantine in the Christian 
Church. After a tempestuous youth, in the third 
year of his reign, Asoka is said to have been con- 
verted to faith in Buddha by a monk to whom he 
remained attached throughout all his life as a lay- 
brother, and whom he adored greatly. He gave 
proof of this not only by rich endowments and 
buildings for church purposes, but also by making 
the beautiful side of Buddhistic ethics, the humane 
mildness and benevolence and patience, the leading 
principle of his rulership. In one of his edicts he 
declares " All men are as my children ; as to them, 
so do I wish to all men that they may participate 
in all of the happiness here and beyond. There is 
no greater deed than the work for the general 
good.'' In another edict he expresses himself con- 
cerning the principle of tolerance thus : " The King 
honors all sects with small gifts and proofs of his 
respect, but of most importance to him is that they 
grow in inner value. The main thing connected 
therewith is carefulness of words, so that one does 
not laud one's own sect to heaven and make another 
low. Whoever does that, even though his purpose 
be praiseworthy, only harms his own sect. There- 
fore, harmony is good, so that mutually all can 
learn the teaching and hearken to it gladly. This 

184 



Buddhism 

is the King's wish, that all sects be well instructed 
and pious." In this spirit he appoints officers for 
the regular instruction of all classes of people, not 
only for men but also, and this is a novelty in India, 
for women. Among the moral duties thus taught, 
respect toward parents and teachers, goodness and 
mildness toward children, servants and poor, right- 
eousness, patience with and benevolence toward all, 
as well as care for animals, were the most impor- 
tant for him. He himself set the good example in 
his care for the welfare of his people. He founded 
hospitals for the sick, he had wells and trees and 
shelters provided for the wanderers along the roads, 
and he made it a duty of his officials to treat all citi- 
zens humanely, particularly those of the lowest 
classes and prisoners. Besides this care for the pop- 
ular application of the lay-ethics of Buddhism, he 
devoted himself to the ordering of church matters. 
For this purpose he called the great council of 
Patna, 252 b.c.^ the third, according to Buddhistic 
tradition. There the disputes concerning monastic 
regulations were settled and the oldest canon of the 
sacred writings was fixed. Whether this latter was 
the same as that which had acquired authority in 
the South-Buddhistic church under the name Tripi- 
taka (" three baskets ") seems questionable. 

Finally, Asoka was the first to begin the spread 
of Buddhism in lands outside of India by the send- 
ing of missionaries. The mission to Ceylon, headed 
by Asoka's son and daughters, was particularly suc- 

185 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

cessful. They were welcomed there in friendly 
fashion and laid the foundation for the most flour- 
ishing and, to this day, the most purely preserved 
Buddhistic church. Asoka also sent missionaries 
to Kashmir, Bactria, and lower India, and sought to 
establish connections with Syria, Macedonia and 
Egypt, but with what success is not known to us. 
Several centuries later. Buddhism found its way 
into Eastern Asia where it gained ground more and 
more as the centuries rolled on, until to-day that is 
its main seat. But it was a somewhat different kind 
of Buddhism from that of the South in Ceylon and 
lower India. At the beginning of the second cen- 
tury of the Christian era occurred that important 
schism in the Buddhist church which divided the 
adherents of the Mahay ana from the Hinayana (the 
great and little vessel). The former did not devi- 
ate much from the older form of the Buddha teach- 
ing. Over the single Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, 
they set an original Buddha as the highest principle, 
an eternal self-existing being whose particular 
forms of appearance are the single Buddhas of the 
past and the Bodhisattvas now existing in heaven. 
These beings, which here and there may have merged 
with the popular gods and the local heroes, became 
the objects of religious prayer, to whom appeals for 
help were made in every time of distress. No more 
was the practical ideal so much the demand for sal- 
vation from sorrow-laden existence through a pas- 
sive Nirvana but rather the dignity of a Bodhisattva 

i86 



Buddhism 

who had the power to act for others as a savior and 
redeemer. The ethical-social motive of the Bud- 
dhistic doctrine of salvation here outweighed the 
purely personal and at bottom somewhat egoistical 
interest in passive salvation and bliss. In this form 
of the doctrine, Nirvana finally became a positive 
blissful existence in the world beyond, a heaven or 
'' pure land." With all of this a tendency had been 
entered upon which came in close contact with pop- 
ular Brahmanism in India and Taoism in China, 
a tendency which held various possibilties of devel- 
opment in itself — on the one hand to theistic belief in 
one God and on the other to naturalistic polytheism 
with its accompanying magic and exorcisms. This 
last tendency became the stronger in India from the 
fifth century on. The report of the journey of the 
Chinese pilgrim Juen-Tschunang, dated seventh 
century, shows that Indian Buddhism had completely 
degenerated and fallen into a mass of crude super- 
stitions and magic notions. In such condition it 
could not offer any powerful opposition to the 
mighty reaction of Brahmanism. In the eleventh 
century it succumbed entirely to Islam which made 
its victorious entry into India. In Ceylon alone, 
Buddhism retained its original character and main- 
tained itself through all the changes of political cir- 
cumstances without a break to this day. 

Buddhism had a peculiar development in Thibet. 
There it took on the nature of a hierarchical system 
whose head was the high priest Dalai-Lama, a pope- 

187 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

king. The possessor of this dignity was considered 
the incarnation of the Bodhisattva, Avalokitesvara, 
merged with the ancient protecting spirit of the 
country. 

**With its shaved priests, bells, rosaries, images, holy 
water and imposing robes, with its processions, formulae of 
confession, mystic rites, and incense for the service of God, 
which the layman only witnesses as a spectator, with its 
abbots, monks and nuns of various grades, with its worship 
of the twofold virgin and of the saints and angels, its fasts, 
confessions and purgatorial fires, its powerful monasteries 
and magnificent cathedrals, its powerful hierarchy, cardinals 
and pope — Lamaism has externally, at least, a strong re- 
semblance to Romanism, despite their essential difference 
of teaching and manner of thought." (Rhys Davids.) 

The contrast to this quasi-Roman Catholic form 
of Buddhism is the Protestant form which it took 
in the Schinschu sect of the Japanese Buddhists after 
the thirteenth century. This sect teaches that 
neither one's own works nor theological knowledge, 
but belief in Amida Suddha alone, makes blessed. 
(Amida is the Japanese name for the Buddha of 
faith, the celestial spirit of salvation which bears 
about the same relation to the historical Gautama, 
the founder of the congregation, that the Christ of 
faith bears to the historical Jesus.) To him alone 
is prayer to be made, not for earthly gifts, but merely 
as an expression of gratitude for his saving grace. 
The faithful will not have to wait until after 
death to be led by Amida into his paradise, but ex- 
perience his blessing presence even now, directly in 

i88 



Buddhism 

the heart. The priest is no more holy than the 
layman, but he is only the teacher of the truth which 
makes blessed ; the priest may marry, for the family 
is the best place in which to practice pious living. 

In conclusion I will quote two confessions of 
earnest Buddhistic piety; the first is that of an 
Indian Buddhist of the eleventh century who was 
forced to fly from his home because of his faith; 
and the second is that of an adherent of the above- 
mentioned Japanese sect: 

"Whether I dwell in heaven or in hell, in the city of 
spirits or of men, may my thoughts be firmly set upon thee, 
for there is no other happiness for me. To me thou art 
father, mother, brother, sister; thou art my true friend in 
dangers, O my beloved ; thou art my master, my teacher who 
doth impart unto me wisdom sweet as nectar. Thou art my 
wealth, my joy, my pleasure, my greatness, my fame, my 
wisdom and my life, thou art my all, O, omniscient Buddha." 

On the shoreless sea of a world of pain 
Where follow birth and death without an end, 
There drove we on, the sport of the wave, 
Until Amida, full of mercy once again. 
Did in his grace the boat of rescue send. 
Which to the blessed port now bears us safe. 



i^ 



XI 



THE GREEK RELIGION 



We will pass from the Indians to the Greeks. In 
the religious history of these two peoples, there ex- 
ists a closer resemblance than commonly is believed. 
In everyday thinking, the opinion has taken firm root 
that two things could not possibly be in greater oppo- 
sition : on the one hand, the gay Greek full of power 
for life, and on the other, the world-weary Indian, 
ascetic and contemplative. But we have seen that 
originally, in the period of which the songs of the 
Rig Veda give us knowledge, the Indians, too, were 
a nation rejoicing in deed and joyous in living, as 
well as the Greeks of the time of Homer; besides, 
we will discover that the world-view and mood of 
the Greek people ended in a deep world-woe, an 
elegiac resignation, a flight from the world of the 
senses to the world of ideas. This is what makes 
the parallel between these two peoples of such in- 
terest : their common revulsion from the joy of life 
to resignation and life-denial. 

Yet there is one thing which differentiates the re- 
ligious history of the Greeks from that of the In- 
dians; one thing which the Indians lacked utterly, 

190 



The Greek Religion 

the Greeks possessed, namely, a sense of order and 
proportion, of clearness and beauty. This artistic 
tendency was the charisma of the Greeks, ever pres- 
ent in their religion as in their philosophy, preserv- 
ing them from the excesses of Indian fantasticism 
and dreaming. It is this which made it possible 
for them to exercise a deep influence upon Oriental 
belief and thought such as had never been possible 
to Indian wisdom. 

Hegel aptly characterized the Greek religion as 
the " religion of beauty." The gods of Homer, — 
Zeus, Apollo, Athene, Aphrodite and the rest, — are 
essentially the aesthetic ideals of beautiful mankind. 
Therein lies their advantage and questionable weak- 
ness. The advantage is this: they are humanized 
to a far greater extent than the gods of the In- 
dians, the Germans, or the gods of any other Indo- 
Germanic people had been. To the credit of the 
Homeric poetry (which naturally was not the 
work of any single poet, but of generations of 
singers, living from the eighth to the tenth cen- 
tury, B.C.) be it said that through it, the various 
local and tribal gods and the spirits of ancestors and 
of nature, which wxre at hand, were uprooted from 
their nature-soil and humanized to a greater extent 
than anywhere else. Greek mythology itself pre- 
serves the record of this change in the legend of the 
struggle between the Olympians and the Titans, 
which ended in the complete victory of the Olym- 
pians. The Titans were conquered once for all and 

191 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

hurled into the Orcus below; in other words, the 
Homeric gods no longer must struggle with the 
powers of nature, they are no longer enmeshed in 
the processes of nature but they have become inde- 
pendent persons, entirely human in their emotions, 
thoughts and actions, so much so, that we are at a 
loss to recognize their former nature-meaning, and 
at best, make suppositions concerning them. They 
have become human beings, beautiful human beings ; 
ideals of human beauty, grace and dignity, in the 
sense of that harmonious balance of sensuality and 
reason, which was ever present to the Greek in his 
ideal of the beautiful-good (kalokagathon). But 
nowhere is it the purely moral ideal of the good as 
the thing of absolute value, for which under some 
circumstances, even that which is pleasant to the 
senses must be sacrificed. These humanized gods 
rise far above mortals in power, knowledge and 
happiness, but they are in no way unlimited and, 
least of all, morally perfect. Though it is often 
said of them, that they can do all things and know 
all things, many different instances show that that 
is not so : their power is limited by fate, that moira, 
whose decree even Zeus must ask, and — even 
though it be contrary to his will, as in the case of 
the death of his son Sarpedon — must obey abso- 
lutely. More imperfect than their power is the 
moral goodness of these gods; you know what the 
morals of these Olympians was, their constant quar- 
rels, their intriguing, their unclean love-affairs, 

192 



The Greek Religion 

beings not even horrified by adultery. Their atti- 
tude toward men is not praiseworthy; they ask not 
after merit or worth, but rest their decisions on 
personal moods and selfish motives — sympathies 
and antipathies, jealousy, revenge and the like. 
Hence it must be said: these gods are esthetically 
refined beings (compare for example an Aphrodite 
with its Asiatic prototype, Astarte or Cybele, what 
a difference between the rude nature-power here 
and the human ideal of grace and charm there) ; 
nevertheless, the truth remains that even this charm- 
ing Aphrodite is not a moral ideal. The gods of 
Homer are ideals of humanity, beautiful but not 
good; they are elevated above the crude elemental 
nature, but they feel and act after the manner of 
primitive peoples and of children, who know no 
higher controlling law of goodness than their own 
arbitrary wishes and their moods. 

It is a strange contrast to find that a Zeus, in his 
official activities, so to speak, is the representative 
of right and righteousness, the guardian of the 
order of the universe, the protector of the helpless 
(particularly in a political sense), the stranger and 
the weak ; as " King of Gods and Men,'' he is the 
representative and stronghold of justice in the 
world. So far then, the god-idea, especially in the 
forms of Zeus, Apollo and Athene, had been made 
moral. But this moralization evidently stopped 
half way, since, according to the legends of myth- 
ology, these gods were in their private lives any- 

193 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

thing but moral examples for men. Therein lies 
the reason for Plato's well-known exclusion of 
Homer as literature for the schools; and if we 
refuse to allow ourselves to be blinded by aesthetic 
charm and put ourselves without prejudice in the 
place of a Greek teacher of young and old, we will 
find Plato's judgment easy to understand, however 
crass a contradiction to the usual Greek reverence 
of Homer it may be. 

Without doubt, the reason why the Greek concep- 
tion of God never rose above this dual nature lay 
in the fact that those who handled it and handed it 
down were not the moral teachers of people, not the 
prophets and the priests, but poets and artists for 
whom the aesthetic charm was of such moment that 
they questioned no farther as to what was morally 
salutary. The poets of the Homeric epics were 
wandering singers who entertained the masters of 
the houses by performing their songs at the courts 
of princes and the knightly castles; we may think 
readily that they narrated their stories of the gods 
and heroes in the fashion which would be most 
acceptable in those circles where a gay life that 
oscillated between feasting, adventure and feuds 
was led, but which knew nothing of serious moral 
purposes and ideals. Because Greece never achieved 
a national monarchy, which could care for the per- 
manent welfare of the people, nor a priesthood, 
which undertook the education of the people, there- 
fore, neither the moralization nor the unification of 

194 



The Greek Religion 

the god-world could be carried out completely, as 
was the case in the religion of Zarathustra or even 
of Israel; the gods remained the ideals of the friv- 
olous nobles, and Zeus remained the first among his 
peers, the presiding officer of the Olympian aris- 
tocracy. 

In the forms of Athene and Apollo whom Homer 
ranks nearest to Zeus, the ideal side of the Greek 
conception of the gods, finds comparatively its 
purest expression. The nature-background is almost 
entirely gone in the case of Athene, the motherless 
daughter of Zeus; she is the goddess of wisdom, 
prudence, diplomacy, industry, technical and artistic 
skill, and the patroness of an industrious citizen- 
ship as well as of arts and sciences. And Apollo, 
the son of Zeus, is the revealer of his will; in the 
worship of Apollo at Delphi, Greek religion at- 
tained its highest, and from Delphi there emanated 
an influence which acted beneficially upon the cul- 
ture of the whole people. From of old, there had 
been an oracle of the earth-spirit Python at Delphi ; 
of him it was believed that he dwelt as a snake in 
the depths of a fissure of the earth. The Doric 
priests of Apollo took possession of this site of the 
oracle, and legend represents this as a victory of 
Apollo over Python. Thereby a higher, more 
moralized train entered into the use of this oracle. 
The enthusiastic form still remained: the virgin 
priestess Pythia sat upon a tripod, placed over the 
fissure in the earth, from which sense-destroying 

195 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

vapors rose and hypnotized her. In this condition, 
whatever she uttered, " with raging mouth/' was 
held to be the word of the god, of whom she seemed 
to be possessed. While the enthusiasm of the 
priestess was the basis of the oracle, it was not 
all, for behind Pythia stood the intelligent priest- 
hood of Delphi, who, in the course of time, had be- 
come rich in experiences, in knowledge of the world 
and of men, and had established many and intricate 
relations. They understood how to edit sensibly 
and to retouch the oracles spoken by the priestess 
in her ecstasy, so that her words became of use. 
This is a noteworthy example of an experience, 
often found active in the history of religion, where 
the combination of an enthusiastic prophecy and 
priestly wisdom resulted in the most effective re- 
ligious influence upon the people. 

It has been maintained that the Delphic oracle 
governed and directed the life of the entire Greek 
people from the ninth to the sixth century. Despite 
the authority of a Curtius, the statement may not be 
entirely correct; nevertheless, this much is certain, 
that nothing great transpired in Greece in those cen- 
turies, without the sanction of the Delphic oracle: 
. this was true of the framing of laws, the perfection 
of political alliances, the sending of colonies as well 
as of the founding of states. Certainly, this sanction 
must have been held in high regard or it would not 
have been sought constantly. Most important was 
the influence which the Delphic worship of Apollo 

196 



The Greek Religion 

exercised upon the national religion and morals. A 
higher conception of religious atonement and purity 
emanated from this pure god, and that became of 
greatest cultural importance. The blood-atone- 
ment, which had previously been practiced as blood- 
revenge, was now subject to state-regulation. It 
was a remarkable step forward that the blood which 
had been spilled did not cry out for revenge, but that 
the purpose and attitude of the doer was asked — 
whether he had shed the blood intentionally or by 
chance, whether he was right or wrong in so doing. 
It was of utmost importance to the whole adminis- 
tration of justice in Greece that not merely the deed 
as such, but the intention of the doer, was the 
standard of measure. From that stage, it was but 
a short step to the idea that the thing of importance 
in the judgment of the value of men, was not the 
external action, but the purity of the attitude ; that 
this thought, in principle at least, had been grasped 
by the better ones among the representatives of the 
religion of Apollo, can scarcely be doubted. The 
warning which greeted the pilgrims to the temple 
at Delphi read : " For the good, one drop suffices, 
but for the bad, all the waves of the sea cannot 
wash their sins away." The other two inscrip- 
tions there are characteristic of Greek piety and 
morality : " Know thyself," and " Nothing beyond 
measure." Thoughtful knowledge of self and 
quiet temperance, self-control, that is the ideal; the 
suppression of the senses was not demanded, but a 

197 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

training of self by the control of all unbounded 
passions; that is the fundamental of Greek ethics, 
which Aristotle formulated in his well-known defi- 
nition of virtue as the mean between two extremes. 
It must be conceded, that even if the highest plane 
had not been reached therein, at least it marked a 
stage in the moral culture of mankind, worthy of 
great respect. 

From the sixth century on, the priests of Apollo 
at Delphi steadily lost in influence; partly, it was 
their own fault, but mainly, it was because of their 
anti-national attitude in the Persian wars, which the 
Greek people could never forget. The new condi- 
tions generally had been at work ; the sixth century 
in Greece was a period of deep-seated changes and 
innovations. The upheaval in state affairs occa- 
sioned by the rise of the democracy in the separate 
city-states was partly the consequence and partly 
the cause of a widespread striving for the eman- 
cipation of individual thought and action from 
traditional faith and paternal custom; it was the 
powerful movement of the Greek spirit growing 
more and more conscious of his characteristic nature, 
his impulse for freedom, clarity, reasonableness, 
without which there never had been a Periclean 
age — even though the shadows inevitably accom- 
panied the light. 

The way in which this new time-spirit expressed 
itself in the religion of the Greeks is remarkable. 
Almost contemporaneously we see two new ten- 

198 



The Greek Religion 

dencies emerge; the opposition to the Homeric 
religion was their one common ground, in every- 
thing else they were impelled by motives that dif- 
fered and satisfied the needs of different classes of 
the people. On the one hand, a renaissance of the 
old, popular peasant-worship, which might be re- 
garded as the democratic reaction against the 
aristocratic state-worship, except, — one point that 
must not be forgotten, — that this reaction bore 
within it the most fruitful seed of religious progress 
in the sense of individual deepening and mystical 
contemplation. On the other hand, the beginning 
of philosophical criticism of the mythical religion, 
a rationalism which originated with the Ionian 
nature-philosophers, lived on in the work of the 
elegiac and tragic poets and reached its climax in 
the skepticism of the Sophists. Therewith came the 
turn into the new movement in the philosophy of 
religion under Socrates and Plato which might be 
designated as the common product and higher union 
of the religion of the mysteries and the thinking of 
the philosophers. In brief outlines, I will attempt 
to describe these three movements. 

First, then, the renaissance of the old peasant- 
religion of agriculture and wine-growing, of De- 
meter and Dionysius. Though the Olympian world 
of the gods of Homer had crowded them into the 
background so far as official worship was con- 
cerned, yet the nature-gods had never been sup- 
pressed entirely. The aristocratic gods of Olympus, 

199 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

who cared only for the larger afifairs of all, never 
had satisfied the needs of the people and not even 
the Homeric shutting-off of souls in Hades had been 
strong enough to break the allegiance of the fam- 
ilies to the combination of soul-worship with the 
realms beyond. But now, in the age when democ- 
racy was growing more powerful, the people turned 
again with renewed zeal to those old but unforgot- 
ten legends and customs which revolved about the 
worship of the gods of the fruitful earth and the 
mysterious nether world. 

From ancient times there had been a worship of 
Demeter and her daughter Kore (Persephone) at 
Eleusis. Legend said that the goddess herself, 
while seeking her daughter, whom Pluto, the god 
of death, had abducted, met with friendly hospitality 
there and established the services ; their original con- 
tent was nothing more than the annual experience 
of the death of vegetation (the abduction of Kore) 
and her resurrection in the Spring (the return of 
Kore to her mother). This simple nature-notion, 
which we met in the Isis-Osiris myths, was at the 
root of the Eleusinian worship of Demeter, but with 
it there was united a higher religious idea, a hope 
of a happy beyond for the souls of the pious. It 
may be that the worship of Dionysius was at work 
here also; from the time of the incorporation of 
Eleusis into the Athenian state and the conversion 
of the Demeter cult into a state affair, the cult of 
Dionysius, native to Athens, was combined with it ; 

200 



The Greek Religion 

besides, they were both closely related through their 
passionate motives and dramatic effects, so that it 
is easily conceivable that the enthusiastic-mystical 
feature of the Demeter cult, upon which the great 
attractive power of the ' Eleusinian mysteries '' 
rested, dates from that period. What was its act- 
ual magic? It has been thought that the priests 
imparted esoteric teachings. That was an error; 
altogether, here was no matter of doctrine nor arti- 
cles of faith. The heart of the celebration was 
*' the actions," dramatic rehearsals of the fate of 
the two goddesses, the mourning of the mother for 
her lost daughter, the quest, and finally the joy of 
the reunited. When we recall that this was a cele- 
bration of gods, v^ho were not leading a life of bliss 
on Olympus, heedless of the sufferings of men, 
but gods who suffered the sorrows of mortals, 
tasted of death, and then again overcame it, then 
we can well understand that for the spirit in search 
of consolation, the hope of a life of bliss beyond 
could easily attach itself to this celebration. For, 
be it well understood, it was not a matter of the 
mere continuation of the soul after death; the 
Greeks had always believed in that, but the condi- 
tion of the souls in Hades was such a miserable 
shadow-existence, that an Achilles prefers rather 
to be a day-laborer on earth than a prince in Hades ; 
naturally, such a woeful future state could not be 
looked forward to with hope, but with fear. As 
against the ordinary lot of souls the initiated of 

201 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

Eleusis hoped for a happy hfe beyond, similar to 
that of the gods ; and with what happiness this hope 
filled them the inspired words of their noblest men, 
like Pindar and Sophocles, give testimony. With 
certainty, no man can say upon what this hope was 
actually based, but we may suppose that the pre- 
paratory fasts and processions, then the growing 
dramatic tension, and finally, at the climax of the 
celebration, the seeing and the hearing of mysteri- 
ous formulae and symbols produced such an exalta- 
tion of the psychical life of the celebrants that they 
became one with the deity and felt themselves to be 
partakers of its invincible life, — hence, they would 
share its future fate, and might thus hope to escape 
the dreaded Hades. 

Originally, Dionysius was a Thracian deity and 
was worshipped on the hills of Thrace with crude, 
orgiastic rites; transplanted to Athens, he became 
the god of the vintage, and the rural feast-days dur- 
ing the vintage in the autumn and the wine-testing 
in the spring, were spiced with many a rude joke 
by the peasants. Here again, Greek genius dis- 
played its power to take over traditional, foreign 
raw material and ennoble, spiritualize, and trans- 
figure it. It was the elemental liveliness of these 
feasts of the wine-god — the alternating songs, the 
dances and the pageants connected with it, — which 
produced the most glorious flower of Greek art, 
the tragic and the comic drama. That the combi- 
nation of the worship of Dionysius with the worship 

202 



The Greek Religion 

of Demeter at Eleusis gave this even a higher im- 
pulse, has been mentioned. The most singular 
manifestation of the Dionysiac enthusiasm was 
that afforded by the appearance of ecstatic seers, 
who acted as fortune-tellers, physicians and priests 
of atonement to the people seeking help and advice. 
Around them there gathered small circles of be- 
lievers, the Dionysiac thiasoi or conventicles, by 
whom ancient oracles were preserved and their 
number increased by new ones; among them, too, 
ancient traditions, such as the theogony of Hesiod, 
were remodeled and imitated, in short, theological 
doctrines thought out, and these were traced back to 
the revelation of some ancient seer, like Orpheus. 
Thus the Orphic theology and literature, which 
probably originated in the sixth century, came into 
being. Though there are but slight fragments 
thereof preserved, the main fundamental thoughts 
may still be recognized. The Dionysius-Zagreus 
myth of the god, killed and resurrected, which is 
connected with the Orphic doctrine concerning 
souls, forms the central point. The Orphics 
taught that human beings were composed of a mix- 
ture of divine (Dionysiac) and anti-divine (Titanic) 
elements. Man's soul is of divine origin and 
through his own guilt, did he sink to the life on 
earth; the body is its jail, its grave. Even death 
does not lead to its release, but to a wandering of 
the soul in a circle of rebirths. The one means of 
escape from this unfortunate circle is the employ- 

203 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

ment of the Dionysiac rites of purification, estab- 
lished by Orpheus. Among these were certain 
ascetic abstinences, particularly from the eating of 
meat. In the realm beyond, a blessed, god-like lot 
awaits those thus consecrated, while the rest will 
suffer castigation in the nether world or enter into 
new embodiments. This theme of the bliss and 
misery beyond was a favorite elaboration of the 
Orphic sacramental priests and the principal attrac- 
tion of their sermons for the people; while, among 
the enlightened, they were regarded as swindlers 
and charlatans. 

Almost contemporaneously with the religious 
movement of the sixth century just described, the 
enlightenment had begun. Xenophanes, who had 
abandoned his Ionian home after the Persian inva- 
sion and settled in Elea (Lower Italy), subjected the 
traditional myths to sharp criticism. Homer and 
Hesiod had ascribed to the gods everything which 
among men was held to be wicked and reprehensible : 
robbery, adultery and lying ; equally foolish it was to 
conceive of the gods in human form; with equal 
justice, animals might represent them in animal- 
shapes, if they had hands. Moreover, God could 
only be the one spirit, with whom man might not 
be compared and who moved the world by his think- 
ing. According to Parmenides, God is the all-one, 
unchangeable Being, while the world of the mani- 
fold and the becoming is an empty semblance, the 
dream of Maya as the Brahmans taught. Accord- 

204 



The Greek Religion 

ing to Heraclitus of Ephesus, there was no such 
thing as a permanent Being altogether but only the 
circle of a purposeless becoming and dissolving, in 
whose endless flow all the goods and values of life 
are submerged; the course of the world is a child's 
play and men are fools who hold that of importance 
which is liable to destruction. Among the Ionian 
Greeks of Asia Minor^ the joy of life had given way 
to this pessimistic mood after their homes had 
fallen prey to the Persian conquerors. Even in 
Greece proper, where the onslaught of the Persian 
armies had been successfully resisted, the voices of 
doubt as to the value of life and of reason and right- 
eousness in the universal order, grew louder and 
louder in the course of the fifth century. 

In the dramas of Sophocles, we hear ever the 
anxious questioning of the unexplainable rulings of 
the gods and the complaints of the hard lot of 
mortals undeserved ; and, even where the poet urges 
to pious humility, the tone of bitter pessimism be- 
trays its presence : *' Best it is never to have been 
born, but second best it is to return speedily thither, 
whence thou comest." With Euripides, this doubt 
of the righteousness of the divine ordering of things 
rises to a doubt of the existence of the gods alto- 
gether, and yet this faithlessness brings him no 
greater peace than did his faith; in this restless 
swinging to and fro, this vain seeking for positive 
conviction, he is the genuine son of the period of 
enlightenment. The main representatives of this 

205 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

period were the Sophists, the masters in oratory, 
among whom the practice of dialectic play with 
concepts soon led to that excess, which skeptically 
disintegrated everything traditional. Protagoras 
thought it could not be known whether there were 
gods or no; and Kritias straightway explained the 
belief in the gods as the invention of clever states- 
men, and law as only another name for the power 
of the stronger. 

This presumption of a superficial sham-knowl- 
edge found its master in Socrates, who held that 
the beginning of wisdom lies in the recognition of 
our lack of it. He held it to be his god-given call- 
ing to educate men to self-knowledge, to an insight 
into that which is salutary for morals and thus to 
virtue. He believed in the providence of a highest, 
all-decreeing reason, who employed gods of the 
popular faith as his instruments, and who was as 
much greater than our reason as the world was than 
our body. He believed, also, in a divine revelation 
within him, which he w^as wont to call the voice of 
his " Dsemonian," almost the same as what we are 
accustomed to call the monitory voice of conscience 
and the warning premonition. It is this Dsemo- 
nion which he relied upon even in opposition to the 
authority of the state; he says to his judges that 
he must obey the god, who had given him the com- 
mission to educate men to virtue, more than men. 
Here, for the first time, personality stands upon the 
good right of individual conviction as against the 

206 



The Greek Religion 

traditions of state and society. This struggle, which 
marks a new epoch in the history of rehgion, re- 
sulted in the death of Socrates. We may call him 
the first blood-witness of philosophy and at the 
same time a prophetic forerunner of Christianity. 

His work, however, was active still in Plato, 
who broadened the self-knowledge of Socrates to 
a knowledge of the supersensual world of " ideas," 
the eternal prototypes of the true, the beautiful, and 
the good, which are the basis and the goal of all 
temporal phenomena, synthesized into a unity in the 
highest idea of the good, which is one with God, 
the creator, father and archetype of the visible world, 
his inborn son. In that higher world, the soul of 
man has its origin; the Orphic theologians had 
taught that the soul was divine in nature and 
origin, and Plato so embodied this doctrine in his 
philosophy that he identified the soul with the idea 
of life and thus caused it to participate in the eter- 
nity and indestructibility of ideas in general. Ac- 
cording to Plato, the descent of the soul into the 
physical world is the consequence of an intellectual 
fall through sin, a paralysis of the wings of the 
soul, striving to attain the heights of the essential 
truth, beauty and goodness. 

But of that, which it has seen once, the soul, 
even after it has been dragged down by its weight 
of earth, retains certain memories; ordinarily dark 
and unconscious, these can be elevated into con- 
sciousness by the perception of the earthly images 

207 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

of those heavenly forms; then and there, longing 
for its higher home awakens in the soul and with it, 
the love of that which is from above, the ideals of 
the true, the beautiful and the good. That is the 
" Eros," the " mediator between god and man, the 
divine demon " or savior-spirit, which lifts us out 
of the close and narrow life into the realm of the 
ideal. For, herein Plato is entirely in accord with 
the Orphics, man has need of a salvation. Though 
the visible world be an image of the world of ideas, 
yet the image is distorted, disfigured and clouded 
by time and space ; though there is much good in the 
world, yet there is much more of evil here below. 
" Hence one must attempt to fly thither from here 
as soon as possible. The flight consists in the 
greatest possible achievement of likeness to God, and 
that occurs in becoming pious and righteous with 
insight." Only the knowledge of the righteousness 
of God and the struggle to achieve likeness to Him 
is virtue, while it is merely sham virtue to avoid 
wickedness for the sake of some useful end. If one 
were to ask whether it is more useful to be right- 
eous than to be unrighteous, the question would be 
as unreasonable as though one were to ask whether 
it is better to be well or sick, to have a spoiled and 
useless or a thorough soul. So unconditioned and 
so all-surpassing is the inner value of virtue, that 
the righteous man is to be regarded as happy even 
though he be misunderstood and persecuted by gods 

and men, while the blasphemer is miserable even 

308 



The Greek Religion 

though he is able to hide his wickedness from both 
of them. This latter case, however, is actually not 
thinkable, because the good and the bad get their 
reward, usually in this life, but if not now, certainly, 
in any event after death. For just as little as 
the righteous can be forsaken by God, so it is 
impossible for the wicked to escape His punishment. 
When a soul, in accordance with its divine nature, 
preserves itself pure of the body and prepares itself 
for death by the persistent striving for wisdom, 
then it may hope to go to its like, the invisible and 
eternal and divine, where a like happy lot awaits it, 
a life of bliss with the gods, free from error and 
passion and other human ills. But those souls 
which persisted in clinging to the sensual and hated 
the spiritual, are held fast to the earth by their low 
instinct and are dragged to new bodies after death, 
into human or animal bodies, each after its own 
kind. Only those souls become of the race of the 
gods, which have withstood desires of the body 
and sought salvation and purification through love 
of wisdom, nourishing themselves by constant con- 
templation of the true and the godlike. 

Thus the Eleusinian and Orphic mysticism is 
here spiritualized to an ethical idealism, which of- 
fers to man, as his highest object and his highest 
good, the greatest possible likeness to and the most 
intimate community with God, the prototype and 
principle of all good ; an ethical idealism, which finds 
the power capable of such elevating, in the divine- 

209 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

human spirit of the Eros, the inspired love of that 
which is from above, the true, good and beautiful. 
A comparison with Augustine's words : " Because 
we are created for God, therefore is the heart rest- 
less until it finds rest in Him,'' will be followed by 
an acknowledgment of the preparation for Chris- 
tianity, contained in the religion and ethics of Plato. 



910 



XII 

THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL 

We come to the religion of Israel, the prophetic 
religion in a high sense. Taken according to time 
and importance, we ought really to have treated it 
before the other prophetic religions, even before 
that of Zarathustra. But I have purposely with- 
held it until now in order not to break the his- 
torical connection with later Judaism and with 
Christianity. 

It is a pity that the beginnings of the Israelitish 
religion, as the beginnings of most religions, are 
shrouded in deep darkness. The information con- 
tained in the Books of Moses concerning those be- 
ginnings IS legendary; any one who understands 
how to judge historically in such matters will see 
clearly that the events could not actually have taken 
place as they are narrated in the Bible. Two 
groups of these legends may be distinguished* The 
first group tells of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, 
Jacob and his sons. These are really myths, orig- 
inally legends of the gods, in which divine beings or 
deified heroes, the heroes eponymi of the Israelitish 
tribes, became men, of whom, in the manner usual 

211 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

in epics, human experiences and deeds are reported. 
We have as Httle right to search for historical mat- 
ter in these legends as in the Homeric narrative of 
the Trojan heroes. 

The matter is somewhat different in regard to 
the second group of legends, those concerning 
Moses. Here, too, we find ourselves at first, still 
in the realm of legend. The stories of the exposure 
and miraculous rescue of the infant Moses have 
their parallels in the legends concerning the child- 
hood of the Assyrian king Sargon, the Median king 
Kyros, the Iranian prophet Zarathustra, the Indian 
hero Krischna and the Greek hero Herakles, the 
Roman emperor Augustus and the Christian Sav- 
iour Jesus, — all legends, which, by their close re- 
lationship to one another, betray their origin in the 
similar motives of ancient folk-poetry. Further, 
the adventures of Moses in exile, the appearance of 
God in the burning thorn-bush, the salvation from 
death in the desert by the penitential blood of 
the circumcision of his son, then the manner in 
which, after his return to Egypt, he demands the 
dismissal of the people of Israel by Pharaoh, the 
miracles which he performs, the miracle of the res- 
cue of the Israelites at the Red Sea, the giving of 
the law on Mount Horeb in personal dialogue with 
God, finally the wandering of the people in the 
desert, where two million souls are supposed to have 
found sustenance for forty years — all of this, by 
its own inner improbability, betrays its late legend- 

212 



The Religion of Israel 

ary character. To this must be added the historical 
data recently furnished by the Egyptian clay-tab- 
lets found in Tellamarna, the residence of the 
heretical King Amenophis IV, who lived about 
1400 B.c.^ and whom you will probably remember 
from the history of the Egyptian religion. One 
of his vassals writes from Jerusalem (which was in 
existence even at that time) begging for help 
against the Chabiri, a martial nation who had forced 
themselves into Canaan. If, as is etymologically 
very probable, the Chabiri are identical with the 
Hebrews, it follows that they had forced themselves 
into Canaan about 1400, that is, long before Ram- 
ses II, during whose reign (about 1250) the two 
cities of Ramses and Pithom, for which the Israel- 
ites were forced to perform slave-services (accord- 
ing to Exodus i, 11) were built. Then, too, in an 
inscription of the reign of Merneptah, the son and 
successor of Ramses, under whom the exodus of 
the Israelites is supposed to have taken place, the 
Israelites are expressly mentioned among other 
conquered Canaanitish peoples, in fact, as one of the 
races whose territory had been laid waste; while, 
concerning their flight from Egypt and the destruc- 
tion of the Egyptian host which followed after 
them, there is no trace either here or anywhere else 
in the Egyptian monuments. Thus you see that 
these things could not have taken place as the 
Bible narrates them. What the actual course of 
events was, is purely a matter of suppositions. 

213 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

Some have thought that the flight of the Israel- 
ites from Egypt and the person of Moses are mere 
fictions. That is going too far; the matter is not 
as bad as that. As far as the person of Moses is 
concerned, careful research students of to-day are 
of one opinion, that, much as legend may have 
woven fables about him, yet he was a historical 
figure of great importance. Of what nature is his 
importance? That is the only question. Was he 
actually the man who led the great mass of his peo- 
ple out of Egypt? Did he then solemnly receive 
the laws of God and bring them to his people ? That 
can hardly be accepted If, however, we observe 
what is said about him in the *^ blessing of Moses,'' 
(Deut. xxxii, — a very ancient document), certain 
fundamental features may be recognized. He is 
there set up as nothing else than the ancestor and 
prototype of the professional Levitical priesthood, 
whose " Urim and Thummim " (oracles by lot) 
were in his hand ; that is, as an oracle-priest, he dealt 
out admonitions and law, as it is customary among 
nomads, that the priest is at once soothsayer and 
judge. He did this at the *' lawing-well " of 
Kadesh-Barnea, an oasis, which thereupon became 
a place of oracles and law for those of the nomadic 
tribes which roamed about the north-Arabian steppe 
in its vicinity. In harmony therewith, is the state- 
ment that Moses was the son-in-law of the Midianite 
priest-prince Jethro and guarded his sheep on 
Horeb, where Jehovah, the god of the mountain, re- 

214 



The Religion of Israel 

vealed himself to him in a flame of fire (Exo- 
dus iii, i), also, that, acting upon the counsel of 
his father-in-law later, he chose thorough men from 
among the people to assist him in dispensing jus- 
tice, in short, that he established a kind of organiza- 
tion of legal procedure, the beginnings of a civil 
order among the nomadic tribes of the steppe. 
(Exodus xviii, 13.) Hence, we may picture Moses, 
for ourselves, as a priest and a judge, who, in the 
name of the god Jehovah, whom he had learned 
to know from the Midianites (and Kenites), dealt 
out oracles and justice for some of the Israelitish 
nomadic tribes, and therewith laid the foundation 
for their religious-political alliance, out of which, 
in due time, grew the unity of '^ the people of 
Israel/' That much I hold to be historically prob- 
able; I do not dare to say anything as to the rela- 
tion which it may have to the legend of the exodus 
from Egypt and Moses's part as leader in that de- 
parture ; later legend has so enveloped the historical 
kernel that it is doubtful whether it ever can be 
brought to light again. 

More important, however, is the question : What 
was that god originally, that Jehovah, in whose 
name Moses dealt out oracles and legal decisions 
and under whose protection the allied tribes of the 
Sinai peninsula journeyed to the north and forced 
their way into Canaan? Jehovah was the god of 
Mount Horeb or Sinai, and his seat is thought to be 
there even in later days. The song of Deborah, 

215 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

probably the oldest piece of writing in the Bible, 
(Judges v), describes him as coming from there: 

** Jehovah, when thou wentest forth out of Seir, 
When thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, 
The earth trembled, the heavens also dropped 
Yea, the clouds dropped water. 

The mountains flowed down at the presence of Jehovah, 
Even yon Sinai at the presence of Jehovah, the god of 
Israel. '- 

Hence he was the god of the mountain, and of the 
lightning and thunder-storms which raged about 
it — the lightning was his weapon in war, the thun- 
der his fearful voice, (Psalm xviii), the cloud of fire 
his form of appearance in the desert. So, you might 
ask, was Jehovah no more than a nature-power 
personified, just as the gods of other peoples? 
Truly, that is what he was originally, but that he 
became in the course of time something so incom- 
parably different and higher is not to be explained 
from his original meaning but from the history of 
his people; the God of Israel acquired his content 
and his importance in and with the history of his 
adherents; he is specifically a historical god. The 
process of that becoming forms the subject matter 
of the history of the religion of Israel. 

First, we must note carefully that the immi- 
gration of the Israelitish tribes did not occur at 
one time, as the later legend said it did, but that 
it occurred gradually and from various districts. 
While those tribes which entered into the middle 
and north of Canaan, under the leadership of 

216 



The Religion of Israelj 

Ephraim, came over the Jordan, the Judaeans of 
the south, from the neighborhood of Kadesh- 
Barnea (where they were originally native) gradu- 
ally pushed on to the north in the direction of 
Jerusalem. In the early days, those were two sepa- 
rate streams, which did not unite until the time of 
David; before that time they were separated by a 
belt of fortified Canaanitish cities which the Israel- 
ites were unable to conquer, being technically 
weaker in the art of war. On the flat land only 
did the Israelitish nomadic tribes first gain a foot- 
hold ; they did not drive out the Canaanitish natives 
dwelling there, but they settled among them, en- 
tered into peaceful, neighborly relations with them 
[and learned the works of civilization from them, 
especially husbandry and vine-growing. The nat- 
ural consequence of this mingling of Israelites and 
Canaanites was a mixing of the religious notions 
and customs of the two peoples. The Israelites, 
having become peasants, could no longer rest satis- 
fied with their former nomad-religion and its pov- 
erty of rites for the worship of God ; they could not 
avoid celebrating the local festivals with their 
Canaanitish neighbors, at which the Baals, the gods 
of the separate valleys, were worshipped as the 
lords of the earth and the givers of its fruits. There 
was no one Baal who was the god of all the land 
of Canaan, but each separate district had its par- 
ticular Baal, that means master, and to him the dis- 
trict owed the fruitfulness of its soil. Thus the 

217 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

Israelites, now become peasants, were brought under 
the lordship of the Baals, the district and fertility 
gods of Canaan ; but that does not mean that they 
had forsaken Jehovah, the God of their nomadic 
period. He was still the God common to the allied 
tribes, under whose name and protection the vic- 
torious advance upon Canaan had been successfully 
carried out; none the less was he the God of the 
mountain, dwelling for the most part on Sinai it 
was thought, active periodically and intermittently 
as experience showed. Whenever war broke out, 
Jehovah would hurry down from Sinai to aid his 
people; like a storm-wind he would sweep through 
the land, inspire his heroes, gather his hosts and 
lead them to battle and to victory. After the vic- 
tory had been won and the returning host, scattered 
to their various localities, took up once more their 
peasant-tasks, the martial god of Mount Sinai had 
nothing to do with them, but his place was taken 
by the Baalim, the nearer gods of the fruitful soil. 
That was not really a " desertion of Jehovah " as 
the later historians were wont to describe it, for, 
at that time, the opposition of the Jehovah worship 
to the Baal worship was not so mutually exclusive 
as later on, but one existed alongside the other ; they 
were mutually complementary. The belief in and 
worship of Jehovah, however, had its ebb and its 
flood-tides, and these variations corresponded to the 
changes in the external conditions of the Israelites. 
This condition of mixed religions lasted during 

218 



The Religion of Israel 

the entire period of the judges and the older kings. 
All of the ceremonies, especially the festivals, give 
evidence of it. The three principal festivals of the 
Israelites were the Spring-festival of the unleavened 
bread (the first barley-harvest), the Summer-fes- 
tival of the wheat-harvest and the Autumn-festival 
of the vintage — all of them agricultural festivals, 
which the Israelites could not have celebrated in the 
desert, but acquired after they settled down as 
peasants. The Pesach (Passah) was the one fes- 
tival which they had retained from their nomadic 
stage and that one they preserved ; originally it had 
been the Spring-festival of the nomads at which the 
first-born of the lambs were offered and eaten as a 
sacrificial-meal. This nomad festival, correspond- 
ing almost exactly in time, was now united with the 
peasant festival of unleavened bread; at a later 
time the union of differing customs was artificially 
explained by the legend of the exodus from Egypt, 
in commemoration of which the Passah was sup- 
posed to be celebrated, — an instructive example o£ 
the use of a religious legend as the subsequent in- 
terpretation of ancient customs which had become 
unintelligible. The same holds true of the sacred 
places. In previous times, the nomadic tribes had 
been wont to gather once a year at some common 
sanctuary, some place of oracles and of judgments, 
such as Kadesh-Bamea, and, during their wan- 
derings, they had no other sacred places. In the 
land of Canaan, however, they found a number of 

219 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

such places of worship : in every district, there were 
sacred trees, sacred wells and sacred stones, in 
which, according to the belief of the inhabitants, 
there dwelt divine beings, who revealed themselves 
there. What else could the Hebrews do but seek 
oracles in the same places and celebrate their festi- 
vals there? In early days, that was not considered 
impious; Jehovah and the Baalim were impartially 
worshipped alongside one another at the same 
places. Later on, the strict servants of Jehovah be- 
came suspicious of such worship and yet they could 
not prevent it at the popular sanctuaries. What 
was to be done? The old sanctuaries were main- 
tained, but a new meaning was given to them ; the 
local legends of Canaan were changed into the patri- 
archal legends of the Israelites. The grove of 
Mamre or Hebron, the well of Beersheba, and the 
stone of Bethel were now supposed to have achieved 
their sanctity through the facts that in the early 
days, these were the places at which Abraham, Isaac 
and Jacob had rested and received divine revelations, 
and they had established places of worship to the 
God of Israel there. 

Thus, the Israelitish poets who composed the 
pious legends annexed the ancient sanctuaries of 
Canaan for Jehovah, the God of their people. The 
same thing has happened repeatedly in the history 
of the Christian Church; when Christianity spread 
abroad among the pagan peoples, it transformed the 
places sacred to the gods and heroes of the heathens 

220 



The Religion of Israel 

into chapels of its own saints, and yet, in so doing, 
it was not able to suppress the old heathen rites 
entirely, but had to suffer them to continue under 
Christian labels. In ancient Israel, the same thing 
happened. These Canaanitish places of worship 
were equipped with idols, the Asherahs and Masse- 
both, which were stone pillars or wooden poles, and 
were looked upon as images or dwelling-places 
(fetishes) of the local deity. The Israelites re- 
tained these idols, giving them the new relation to 
Jehovah. Besides, they had their " ark of Jehovah," 
which was carried along in military expeditions, but, 
at other times, was stationed in a sanctuary, in early 
days at Silo, and later at Jerusalem. By and 
through the ark, the effective power of Jehovah was 
in some mysterious manner supposed to be present. 
Hence the fear that the aid of Jehovah has been lost, 
when, after an unfortunate battle, the ark falls into 
the hands of the Philistines. But Jehovah showed 
himself to be loyal to his people : by means of dire 
plagues, the Philistines soon learned that it was not 
safe to hold that ark and they sent the uncomfort- 
able visitor home again as rapidly as they could. 

A remarkable legend is told which shows how 
crudely realistic was the notion of the attachment of 
the miraculous power of the God and the visible 
symbol of worship. A similar idol was that image 
of a bull, erected at Dan and Bethel, places of wor- 
ship in the kingdom of Ephraim, and set up by 
kings who were believers in Jehovah ; nobody took 

Z2l 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

offense. Jehovah was represented by the image of 
the bull, exactly as the other Semites were wont to 
depict their gods by the same image ; not until later 
did the prophets condemn this as idolatry. Finally, 
the mixing of the two religions found peculiar ex- 
pression in the name of God itself. The uncertain 
multiplicity of the individual local gods and spirits 
was subsumed under the collective idea of the 
Elohim (world of spirits, deity) and this was identi- 
fied with Jehovah, by a combination of the two 
names into one — Elohim-Jehovah. Was that in- 
tended to convey that Jehovah had been merged into 
the Elohim ? Or that the Elohim had been absorbed 
by Jehovah ? For the mass of the people, the answer 
would be doubtful for a long period of time, but 
finally, Jehovah emerged from the contest alone, the 
victor. What causes helped to bring about that 
result? 

On the part of certain puritanical extremists 
descended from the Kenitic nomads (later known as 
Rechabites and resembling the Nazarites) there had 
been a powerful opposition from early days against 
the entanglement of the Israelites in the culture 
and religion of the Canaanites. They were a sect of 
ascetics opposed to civilization; they maintained 
that the primitive nomadic life on the steppes was 
the ideal truly pleasing to God. They dwelt in 
tents, not in houses; they were not engaged in 
agriculture and tHey drank no wine. It was an 
energetic reaction against the doubtful " blessings 

2Z2 



The Religion of Israel 

of culture/' which, naturally, could not succeed in 
this extreme form; nobody dreamed of exchanging 
the settled life of the peasant by a return to the 
nomadic existence of the poor shepherd. How- 
ever, the rise of these peculiar dreamers acted as an 
earnest reminder of the old simple and sober 
nomadic life with the heavens for a roof and the 
sole protection of the stern God of the desert, the 
terrible God of war, Jehovah. A deeper impression 
was made by the appearance of the Nebiim who 
were not, in the beginning, what we understand 
by the word prophets, but were, rather, ecstatic vis- 
ionaries who wandered through the land in com- 
panies after the fashion of the Corybantes or the 
native Dervishes and created the impression of 
being possessed or inspired by their mad actions. 
There were similar characters among the Canaanites 
(as there were also in many of the nature-religions) 
and their appearance among the Israelites may per- 
haps be traced to them; but from the beginning, 
they achieved greater importance among the Israel- 
ites because they became the bearers of the national 
religious inspiration during the times of greatest 
oppression at the hands of the Philistines. Wher- 
ever the great mass of lazy or cowardly Israelites 
were about to yield or compromise, there these in- 
spired men appeared, and in the name of Jehovah 
roused the courage for the cause of national eleva- 
tion and freedom, so that Jehovah seemed to speak 
through them and promise his assistance. The 

22Z 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

consequence of this exaltation was that develop- 
ment of national power which came in the time of 
Saul and David and finally meant the victory of 
Jehovah over the Baals of Canaan. 

Of more importance, however, for the religion of 
Israel, was the activity of the two allied opposition 
parties, the puritans and the prophets, in the days 
of Ahab. When King Ahab introduced the Tyrian 
worship of Baal in Samaria in order to please Jeze- 
bel, his Phoenician wife, the pious servants of Jeho- 
vah feared that the rise and spread of this strange 
worship might lead, in the end, to the extirpation 
of the national worship of Jehovah. At this criti- 
cal juncture rose the powerful figure of the prophet 
Elijah the Tishbite. He openly opposed the King 
and combatted his misrule, both from the religious 
and the ethical standpoint. For Ahab had not only 
placed the worship of the strange idols on the same 
level with that of Jehovah, but he had oppressed the 
poor, he had increased his lands by illegal and 
forcible means, as the well-known story of the vine- 
yard of Naboth proves. Thus it was the religious 
and the moral conscience which urged Elijah the 
prophet to enter into opposition to the King and 
give testimony for Jehovah as the one God of justice 
and of righteousness. Persecuted by the King and 
the priests of Baal, the prophet was forced to fly. 
He escaped to Mount Horeb, the dwelling-place of 
his God, and there experienced a miraculous revela- 
tion. Outside of the cave in which he had spent 

224 



The Religion of Israel 

the night, there raged a powerful wind-storm, a 
great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke 
the rocks in pieces, but Jehovah was not in the wind ; 
then came an earthquake, but Jehovah was not in 
the earthquake; then came a fire but Jehovah was 
not in the fire ; then a soft murmur was heard, and 
EHjah covered his face with his mantle. Stepping 
out of the cave, he heard a voice which asked him : 
What doest thou here, Elijah? Then the prophet 
made his complaint that he has been jealous in the 
cause of Jehovah, but that he alone of all the loyal 
ones was living and that now even his death 
was sought. But Jehovah consoles him : " Yet I 
have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees 
which have not bowed unto Baal." (I Kings, xix, 
lo seq.) 

The life-work of Elijah was a turning-point in 
the history of the religion of Israel, similar in its 
consequences to those which followed the appear- 
ance of Zarathustra in Iran. As the latter, so 
Elijah forced the people to a decisive choice between 
the lying gods or the one God who alone is true 
because he is the God of justice and of righteous- 
ness : " How long halt ye between two opinions ? 
If the Lord be (the true) God, follow him: but if 
Baal, then follow him." (I Kings, xviii, 21.) It 
was the ethical idea of God matured in the soul of 
the prophet by the need of his time which broke 
through with irresistible power to the demand for a 
final choice between Jehovah, the holy God, and the 

225 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

unholy nature-gods of the heathen. Therewith Je- 
hovah, the God of the people of Israel, became the 
God of the moral world-order who alone could lay 
claim to the right of rulership and who soon was 
recognized as truly the one. 

In the path opened up by Elijah followed the 
prophets of the eighth century, of whom we have 
written documents, and they became the creators of 
an ethical monotheism from which even a Moses 
and a David had been far removed. Amos preached 
to the unthinking Israelites that they should not 
brag of the protection of Jehovah as long as they 
made themselves unworthy of it by their unright- 
eousness; that he himself is not bound to any one 
people, the stranger peoples stand under his rule and 
must serve as rods for the chastisement of his dis- 
loyal people. With powerful words, he thunders 
against the semblance of piety of their external wor- 
ship of God : Not the burnt offerings, nor the peace 
offerings, nor the noise of songs, is pleasing to God ; 
" but let judgment roll down as waters and right- 
eousness as ever flowing streams; seek the good 
and not the bad, then ye shall live, thus (alone) 
shall Jehovah be with ye as ye say." Hosea's say- 
ing is well known : " Not sacrifices but mercy and 
judgment do I desire/' Mercy and judgment ! With 
them a softer note is heard ; not only righteousness 
in the legal sense, but active humanity is demanded 
by the religion of Jehovah, in whose ethical nature, 
for the first time there appears through the agency 

22^ 



The Religion of Israel 

of Hosea the milder features of forbearance and 
forgiving grace. 

Soon after these two prophets who were active 
in the kingdom of Ephraim, Isaiah appears at the 
court of the Kings Ahaz and Hezekiah in Jerusalem. 
He too thunders against the " lying sacrifices" and 
the pseudo-pious worshippers whose hands are full 
of blood; instead of which he demands the service 
of God by righteous living : " Put away the evil of 
your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do 
evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the op- 
pressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." 
Thus, the qualities by which Jehovah is to be 
worshipped through service are humanity, brother- 
liness, and readiness to help. You see, therefore, 
that it is the social-ethical conscience born in this 
prophet of the pressure of bad social conditions 
that creates the higher ideal of God. But this ideal 
found so little response that Isaiah declares in bit- 
ter pessimism that the obstinacy of this people is the 
cause of his mission, (vi. 9, seq.) The opposition 
of a stolid world serves only to increase his confi- 
dence in God; above the gloom of the present his 
prophetic, hopeful vision lifted itself to a more 
glorious future wherein his people, now wandering 
in darkness, will see a great light and upon the 
throne of David there will sit a wonderful hero 
and prince of peace in whose realm there will be 
joy without end. (ix, i, seq.) 

Isaiah's favorable influence upon the government 

227 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

of Hezekiah was without permanent results. Dur- 
ing the reign of his successor, Manasseh, idolatry 
was at its worst: in Jerusalem, in the very temple 
of Jehovah, could be seen the Phoenician sacrifice of 
children and the Babylonian worship of Istar and 
her sun. Not until the reign of Josiah, the grand- 
son of Hezekiah, did the prophetic religious ideal 
find practical application through the united efforts 
of the King and the priesthood. The heathen 
forms of worship in Jerusalem were abolished and, 
in order to root out entirely the semi-heathenism 
of the local forms of worship in the country, all 
sacrificial services at sanctuaries outside of Jeru- 
salem (on the high places) were forbidden and sac- 
rifices to Jehovah confined entirely to the temple at 
Jerusalem. At the same time, the prophetic ideal 
of the religion of Jehovah was fixed in a law-bobk 
supposed to have been found in the temple and, with- 
out doubt, composed by the priesthood there: it is 
the law preserved for us in the fifth book of Moses 
and known as Deuteronomy. Therein the worship 
of Jehovah as the one God, and the sincere love of 
him, is set up as the highest principle; upon that, a 
simple, civil and generally humane system of duties 
is based — a sound and humane ethics correspond- 
ing to the spirit of the prophetic religion. The 
proclamation of this law, 621 B.C.:, was the means 
of making this religion, which had until then lived 
only in the hearts of the best, the affair of all and 
a permanent institution. 

228 



The Religion of Israel 

Naturally, it was soon seen that laws and the 
institution of a purer order of divine worship were 
not sufficient to change the spirit of the people. 
The masses as well as the priests fell under the illu- 
sion that everything was done when the practices 
laid down by the law for temple-service had been 
done, that then the help of Jehovah against dangers 
which might threaten would certainly be forthcom- 
ing. Then it was that Jeremiah, the sublimest and 
most tragical of the great prophetic figures, under- 
took to combat this illusion and, with a courage 
that recognized neither high nor low, attacked this 
false certainty. He warned sharply against the 
human trust in the temple, which, by immoral life, 
was transformed into a murderer's den, and called 
attention to the correct knowledge of the law where 
the life did not conform thereto; lying prophets 
was the name he applied to those optimistic preach- 
ers of peace who closed their eyes to the approach- 
ing judgments and lulled the people and their 
leaders to rest in fateful security. But, though he 
saw that there was no escape from the heaviest 
blows which fate had in store for both city and 
state, his faith in the permanence of the covenant 
between Jehovah and his people remained unshaken. 
Even in the future, he saw, as the last fruit of the 
impending heavy judgments, a new period of sal- 
vation, the dawn of a day when religion would be 
entirely within man and the knowledge of God 
would be universal. 

229 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

** Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make 
a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house 
of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with 
their fathers in the days that I took them by the hand to 
bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant 
they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith 
the Lord; But this shall be the covenant that I will make 
with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, 
I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their 
hearts; and will be their God and they shall be my people. 
And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and 
every man his brother, saying. Know the Lord : for they shall 
all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of 
them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and 
I will remember their sin no more.'* (Jer. xxxi, 31, seq.) 



230 



XIII 

POST-EXILIC JUDAISM 

The punishments which Jeremiah had prophesied 
came to pass : Jerusalem was destroyed, the greater 
number of the Jews carried off into exile to Baby- 
lon (586 B.C.). That the religion of Jehovah, how- 
ever, did not fall at the same time as the Israelitish 
state is the merit of the prophets who had separated 
Jehovah from the people of Israel long before, and 
had recognized him as the God of the moral world- 
order who reigns as the eternal spirit beyond all the 
changing fates of nations. Again, during this period 
of exile, a period of misery, the prophets kept alight 
the sparks of faith and hope. At this time, we meet 
two powerful figures, differing fundamentally in the 
manner of their thought and action, but both of them 
of greatest influence in the development which fol- 
lowed. Perhaps they might be called the exemplars 
or fathers of two tendencies which run parallel in 
the Jewish religion from that time on, which strug- 
gle with one another and finally end, the one in 
Talmudic Judaism, and the other in Christianity. I 
mean Ezekiel and the second, or Babylonian Isaiah, 
as we are wont to call the one or more unknown 
authors of the prophecies in Isaiah, chapters xHxvi. 

231 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

Ezekiel is the classic type of theocratic priest; 
with a cool heart, he looks upon the suffering of his 
people as the righteous, divine punishment for the 
guilt heaped up by them during their entire past. 
Their misfortune served him as a means of awaken- 
ing the feeling of guilt, which he then intensified 
to such a degree of abject humility that all human 
striving for happiness, all desire for temporal power 
and national independence should be broken and 
choked, in order that the new structure of the 
priestly state of God might be erected upon the 
ruins of their national state-existence. His ideal is 
a community of pious men under the rulership of 
the priest, the central point is the temple; their 
greatest care is the legally ordered divine service, 
and the one task of life is the sanctification of all 
their members by strict observance of ceremonial 
regulations and rigid avoidance of all sullying con- 
tact with the heathen. At the beginning of the exile, 
Ezekiel had designed this program, and one hun- 
dred years later, through Ezra's proclamation of the 
priestly law, it was actually carried out in the Jew- 
ish community which returned to Palestine. 

How different the spirit we meet in those prophe- 
cies of that great unknown " Deutero-Isaiah,'' writ- 
ten toward the close of the period of exile. He 
did not seek to break and rule his people, but to 
console and lift them up; he did not seek to make 
his people ritually exclusive and narrow their lives, 
but, rather, in the widest missionary work for true 

232 



Post-Exilic Judaism 

religion among all the peoples of the world, he held 
up for his people the ideal of its historical mission 
and hope. His first purpose is to arouse and to 
strengthen in his deeply-bowed people a faith in its 
own future, a trust in the loyalty of its God, but 
above and far beyond that stretches his prophetic 
vision ; for he knows — the history of the peoples of 
the world is the proof for him — that Jehovah is not 
only the God of Israel but the one Lord of all the 
world, the Creator of heaven and of earth, the con- 
troller of the fate of all peoples; he knows the 
heathen gods are nothing, images made by folly and 
by human hands. This one and only God, however, 
has chosen the little people of Israel, not that they 
should remain his one possession, but that, as his 
servant, instrument and herald, they may proclaim 
the true God to the peoples, that they may become 
the mediating nation in the divine education of 
humanity. 

Deutero-Isaiah also gives up the thought of tem- 
poral rulership, but not in order to set up an exclu- 
sively Jewish theocracy in its place. Here Israel's 
vocation is to come in its stead, Israel's religious 
mission — the ideal described by Deutero-Isaiah in 
the wonderful words : " Behold my servant whom 
I uphold ; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth : 
I have put my spirit upon him ; he shall bring forth 
judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor 
lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. 
A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking 

233 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

flax shall he not quench : he shall bring forth judg- 
ment in truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, 
till he have set judgment in the earth ; and the isles 
shall wait for his law." (xlii, i, seq.) This sheds 
a new light upon the heavy sufferings which were 
Israel's fate. Ezekiel's crude criminal-law theory 
IS not a key to the adequate solution of this problem ; 
but in the eyes of a religious philosopher of his- 
tory — and such name may well be given to our 
prophet — the suffering of the servant of God ap- 
pears as the instrument by which he is enabled to 
attain his highest object, the salvation and redemp- 
tion of men. In whatsoever manner the words of the 
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah may be interpreted, this 
much is certainly clear, that therein the deep thought 
which has ever stood the test finds expression, that 
the innocent suffering of the righteous is a sacrifice 
for the best welfare of all, a purchase price of the 
salvation of the world. 

In the generations which followed the prophets, 
their great expectations were not realized by events 
as they occurred. True, Cyrus, the Persian King 
whom Isaiah greeted as the annointed of Jehovah 
(Messiah), did give the Jews permission to return 
from their exile after his conquest of Babylon, 
536 B.C. ; and the greater portion of the Jews did 
actually return to their home, but the conditions in 
and about Jerusalem, for the newly settled colony 
were very miserable. A political crisis, which 
shook the foundations of the Persian kingdom 

234 



Post-Exilic Judaism 

shortly afterward in the reign of Darius, gave the 
opportunity for kindling anew the old temporal 
political messianic hopes and the flames were fed 
by Haggai and Zechariah, the prophets ; heedless of 
all the experiences of the past, again they gave them- 
selves up to the bold expectation of God's impend- 
ing judgment upon the heathen and the universal 
rulership of the Jews: they prepared the golden 
crown for the Davidic prince, Zerubabel, the Persian 
governor. The Persian realm, however, survived 
the crisis and the Jews had to postpone their mes- 
sianic hopes to some uncertain future day. The 
temple which had been begun was completed, but 
the religious inspiration was paralyzed by this 
new disenchantment. Actual conditions were now 
looked in the face ; peace was made with the neigh- 
bors and alliances sought particularly through 
marriages, with those of their comrades who had 
remained in Samaria. The Jewish colony which had 
remained in Babylon — for whom the strict exclu- 
sion of their heathen environment was the problem 
of existence — regarded the action of their brethren 
as fraught with danger for the religion of Jehovah. 
They wished for the realization of that plan which 
Ezekiel and others of like spirit had matured ; among 
them lived the desire for the achievement of the 
ideal of a Jewish theocracy on the soil of the sacred 
land of the fathers. 

To this end, Ezra, the priest and scribe, arranged 
all of those sketches and studies into a new " Mosaic 

235 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

law book " and gained permission of Artaxerxes, 
the Persian King, to introduce it officially at Jeru- 
salem. Accompanied by a large caravan of Jewish 
exiles from Babylon, he arrived at Jerusalem 458 
B.C. Soon thereafter, he began the purging of the 
people of God of all foreign elements and his exclu- 
sion of the heretical Samaritans was so rigorous that 
he did not even hesitate at the dissolution of the 
existing mixed marriages. In order to protect his 
work against the forcible entry of the neighbors 
whom he so ruthlessly insulted, he tried to rebuild 
the walls of Jerusalem; but this attempt failed be- 
cause the governor of Samaria had induced the Per- 
sian king to forbid it. That was a heavy blow for 
the authority of the priest Ezra; his hopes for the 
introduction of the new priestly law seemed to be 
blighted for years. Finally help did come to him 
again from the Persian court where the Jewish cup- 
bearer, Nehemiah, had used his position in order to 
obtain from the king his own commission as gov- 
ernor of Jerusalem and the permission to build its 
walls. By his wisdom and the power of his per- 
sonality, he was able to win the people over for 
himself and Ezra. After the reconstruction of the 
walls had been finished, he called a general gather- 
ing of the people and they called upon Ezra to read 
his law book. The impression was so powerful 
that the whole people, with the exception of a few 
single priests whose opposition was swept away by 
the enthusiasm of the mass, at once followed the 

236 



Post-Exilic Judaism 

example of Nehemiah the Governor, binding them- 
selves by their signatures to obey the priestly law 
of Ezra. This solemn deed, 445 b.c.^ v^as the be- 
ginning of the Jewish priest-state. As in the case 
of the later copy, the Roman papacy, this was the 
result of an alliance of the priesthood with the royal 
power. 

In its original form the priestly law book has not 
survived, but the contents have. Later periods 
added to it older laws and writings of historical or 
legendary content, forming in its entirety the five 
books of Moses (Pentateuch) which makes up the 
beginning of the Old Testament canon. This work, 
which does not contain a single line by Moses him- 
self, is an artificially wrought collection of writings 
from about five centuries and reflects the various 
planes of the development of the religion of Israel 
and Judah in the period between Solomon and the 
last of the Persian kings. The priestly law book is 
differentiated from Deuteronomy, which had been 
promulgated under Josiah in 621 b.c.^ by the ab- 
sence of civil and ethical regulations and the exclu- 
sive attention to the arrangement of the priestly 
hierarchy and their ceremonial functions, as well as 
the ordering of the observances by which Jewish 
life became sanctified, that is, by which it should 
become separated from other people. It may, per- 
haps, be said that the priestly law of Ezra is the 
epitome of the religion of the average man among 
the Jews in the exile. Their strong feeling of guilt 

^Z7 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

expressed itself through the mass of penitential sac- 
rifices and new ceremonies, such as the Day of 
Atonement, upon which the sins of the people 
through the whole year are put on the back of the 
scape-goat and considered done for when the scape- 
goat has been driven off into the wilderness. This 
crude rite revived the animistic notion of sin and 
guilt as evil, material in its nature and therefore 
removable by sensuous means ; all of which acquires 
the new sanction under the guise of ancient revela- 
tion. 

The same holds true of the complicated laws for 
purification, particularly those relating to clean and 
unclean animals ; in them the " taboo " of the 
nature-religion is raised to the level of a most im- 
portant matter of conscience and becomes a com- 
mand of the holy God of Israel. Every one can see 
how far this priestly god, who bothers about such 
miserable stuff, falls below the ethical idea of God 
enunciated by the great prophets. This decline into 
a semi-heathen ritual religion, glorified only by the 
halo of a divine revelation to Moses, can be ex- 
plained only by the condition of Jewish worship 
during the exile ; the Jews felt the need of emphasiz- 
ing and preserving their separateness as against 
their heathen environment, and, lacking a system of 
worship employed such external rites as abstinence 
from the eating of pork, strictest observance of the 
Sabbath, circumcision, and the like. Thereby, these 
things which had been naive popular customs be- 

23S 



Post-Exilic Judaism 

fore and which had not been matters of deep con- 
cern, now assumed the value of works and sacred 
duties pecuHarly pleasing to God, the performance 
of which represented membership in the Jewish 
church. Thus, at the cost of making it mechanical 
and, in half-heathenish fashion, material, the pro- 
phetic Jehovah religion was preserved. 

However, this was only one side of the post- 
exilic Jewish religion. Within the hard shell of 
external legality, the better spirit of the ideal re- 
ligion of the prophets did live on and produced 
new and valuable fruit. At the same time that the 
sensuous sacrificial services which were so little to 
the taste of the prophets were being carried on with 
ever-increasing pomp at the temple, there arose the 
spiritual service of God without sacrifice, through 
scriptural edification in the synagogue. Where 
formerly the prophetic belief in God had been the 
possession of a few individuals, now it could be 
acquired by all the members of the Jewish congre- 
gation as their personal conviction and spiritual 
attitude. The most beautiful fruits of this inter- 
nalization and application of religion to the experi- 
ences of man's daily life were the Psalms and the 
wisdom books (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job). Their 
ideal of piety is not the ritualistic saintliness of 
the priestly code, but a clean heart and noble deed 
in the fear of and the trust in God. They alone 
who have this are true servants of God and as such 
they know themselves to be separated by a deep 

239 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

abyss from the indifferent and the godless who, 
though they are Jews by birth and in external prac- 
tices, are really on a level with the heathen. Once 
having made this difference between true and merely 
external seeming attachment to the congregation of 
God, wherein the personal and moral value of the 
individual was the standard of measure, the religious 
importance of national boundaries was lost ; it could 
not be overlooked that outside of Judaism also 
there were pious and good men. It was in this sense 
that Malachi, the last of the prophets, said that the 
name of God is great everywhere among the peo- 
ples in the East and the West, and in every place 
pure offerings are sacrificed to him, which means 
that among the heathen too there were true servants 
of God. Yea, the author of the Book of Job has 
even made a non-Jewish man the patient Job, the 
representative of a purer belief in God as against 
Jewish prejudices. 

With this personal deepening of the religious 
consciousness, there arose new problems, disheart- 
ening enigmas and cruel doubts. So long as 
religion was thought of mainly as applied to the 
people as a whole and each one felt himself a partici- 
pant in its fate through the feeling of solidarity, the 
fact of experience that the pious man was often the 
victim of misfortune, and the godless man enjoyed 
good fortune, was not food for much thought. But 
now that the pious individual felt himself as the 
,bearer of an unmediated per^aciaj relation to God, 



Post-Exilic Judaism 

now that ethical self- judgment had deepened and 
clarified, the serious question arose: How can the 
misfortune of the pious be reconciled with the ruler- 
ship of a God who rewards and punishes right- 
eously? This question was the more difficult 
because the Judaism of that day had no such hope as 
that of reconciliation in the world to come, for that 
thought was then either entirely strange or was it- 
self a mere premonition of a dawning problem. 

The more worthy of admiration, therefore, is the 
courage with which the author of the Book of Job 
struggled with this dark riddle. He has the friends 
of Job take the usual Jewish belief in retribution 
and make complaint against the patient man that 
his miseries must be the punishment for some secret 
sins. Against this. Job defends himself, for his 
conscience is free from heavy guilt. He calls God 
himself to witness and trusts that the true God will 
once again save the honor of a man sorely misrepre- 
sented and enter the lists for him who has been 
patient in his suffering and firm in his faith through 
it all. And the poet does actually have God himself 
appear upon the scene and declare against the sus- 
picions of his friends — suspicions which were the 
consequence of their belief in retribution — that the 
pious and patient Job is right. So this belief, in so 
far as it makes the world's judgment of a man de- 
pendent upon his external circumstances, is rejected 
as irreconcilable with the purer knowledge of God 
himself; the pious consciousness rises to the inner 

241 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

certainty of its community with God which, inde- 
pendent of the chance of external fate, cannot even 
be shaken by misfortune. This view of the Hebrew 
poet who wrote the didactic poem called Job har- 
monizes completely with that of the probably con- 
temporaneous Greek thinker, Plato; the latter also 
presents the unconditional value of the ethically 
good in his picture of the righteous suffering mis- 
representation and persecution, yet inwardly happy 
and certain that the righteous can never be for- 
saken of God. The same thought is expressed in 
some of the Psalms; a particularly beautiful exam- 
ple is the seventy-third Psalm whose author, fleeing 
from gloomy fate, finds refuge in God : 

"Nevertheless I am continually with thee: 
Thou hast holden me by my right hand. 
Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, 
And afterward receive me to glory. 
Whom have I in heaven but thee? 

And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. 
My flesh and my heart faileth: 
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." 

Wherever such an attitude shows itself, we may 
well call it Christianity before Christ. Average 
Judaism, however, remained on the standpoint of 
the utilitarian belief in retribution, and the conflict 
between this faith and the facts of experience led 
many a one into that pessimistic, skeptical mood 
which the " preacher " with his Hellenic training 
confessed when he said, " all is vanity." 

242 



Post-Exilic Judaism 

From the third century on, Greek enlightenment 
made its entry among the upper classes of Judea, 
as it had in all of Asia Minor. For many the ten- 
dency to strange culture produced an indifference to 
the faith and customs of the fathers. In this inclina- 
tion to things Greek, the thoroughly worldly priest- 
nobles of Jerusalem went to such an extreme that 
they offered to help the Syrian King, Antiochus 
Epiphanes, in his effort at complete Hellenisation 
of the Jewish people. However, the violence with 
which this attempt was made awakened the reac- 
tion of the national and religious spirit of the peo- 
ple. When the combination of the Maccabean 
heroes with the pious peasants succeeded in defeat- 
ing the Syrian army and throwing off the govern- 
ment of the strangers, the Jewish religion was saved 
from being caught in the threatening snare of the 
Greek spirit. Then happened what happens every- 
where and at all times under such circumstances: 
the victorious religious inspiration ends in a tre- 
mendous ecclesiastical reaction and what had begun 
in the spirit is completed in the flesh — ritualism, 
hierarchism, dogmatism, etc. As a further protec- 
tion against the incursion of heathenism, the Assi- 
dseans, the party of the pious which soon became the 
Pharisees, the party of the " separates," laid most 
stress on a strict fulfillment of the law in all its 
detail and externals. But the written law was not 
enough for them: a further hedge of school ordi- 
nances was built up, making the realm of things 

243 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

permitted ever narrower and tightening the net 
of observances around daily life. No longer was 
stress laid upon the pious attitude of the Psalms 
and the life wisdom of the Proverbs but upon legal 
correctness according to the prescriptions of the 
Scribes and the Pharisees. In the school of these 
virtuosos of religion, that tendency noticeable as 
early as the priestly law of Ezra, which gave cere- 
monials far greater importance than morals, was 
carried to such an extreme that the law became an 
oppressive yoke and the fulfillment of all its de- 
mands became an impossible task for the great mass 
of the working people. Hence these exemplary 
pious men of the school looked down arrogantly 
upon the " people of the soil," condemning them as 
godless because they did not understand aught of the 
casuistry of the school regulations and because the 
needs of daily life made it impossible for them to 
avoid transgressions and impurities. Hence the 
law became a dividing barrier ; not only did it divide 
the Jew from the heathen, but it divided the Jews 
among themselves into those who were righteous in 
the legal sense and the profane mass. The ethical 
living spirit of the religion of the prophets became 
a death-dealing letter by this Pharisaical distortion. 

But however much the life of the Jews might be 
enchained and cut off from the rest of the world by 
this legal discipline of the Scribes, they could not 
prevent the inpouring of a mass of Eastern and 

244 



Post-Exilic Judaism 

Western elements into the thinking of the Jews; 
thus there was brought about a mixture of Jewish, 
Oriental, and Greek thoughts which prepared the 
foundation for a new religious structure of the 
future. From Babylon and Persia in the East came 
the speculations concerning divine mediators, con- 
cerning the realm of the good and the bad spirits, 
concerning the resurrection, last judgment, and 
places of retribution in the world beyond. Divine 
attributes such as Wisdom, Spirit and Word, were 
transformed into independent personal mediators 
between God and the world after the manner of the 
Persian Amschaspans or archangels. The old idea 
of the " messengers of God," angels, was expanded 
into a host of spirits whose leaders have certain 
specified duties in the government of the world; 
peoples and individuals have their protecting angels 
and the phenomena of nature are controlled by 
angels, an imitation of the heathen nature-gods. As 
in the Persian religion where the host of good spirits 
is opposed to the host of bad spirits, so Judaism 
now acquired the demons which had formerly been 
meaningless ghosts in the popular belief, and they 
took on the religious meaning of fallen angels mak- 
ing up an anti-divine realm under their over-lord, 
Satan. Satan himself, who in the Book of Job had 
been regarded as one in God's train and played the 
part of the divine state-prosecutor, the complainant 
against man, now became the opponent of God and 
the prince of the mundane realms oppressing the 

245 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

divine realm of the Jews. The appearance of sin 
and of evil in God's good creation was traced back 
to temptation by Satan, and his demons were looked 
upon as the originators of all physical and spiritual 
diseases (possession). The fear of these inimical 
spirit-powers weighed like a mountain upon the 
souls of all the men of that time, upon the Jew no 
less than upon the heathen. But as without doubt 
the Jews took over from the Persians this idea of a 
struggle between the divine and the Satanic rule, 
so they hoped, as did the Persians, that the divine 
rule would eventually be victorious, that the people 
of God would be saved and that there would be a 
universal judgment and a resurrection of the dead. 
These pictures of the future are the themes of the 
Apocalyptic literature which became of supreme 
importance for the Jewish religion in the last cen- 
tury before and the first century after Jesus. The 
Book of Daniel, written in the time of the Macca- 
bees, 165 B.C., marks the beginning. It contains a 
religious philosophy of history dividing the world- 
period into four parts in imitation of the Persian; 
its underlying thought is that after the impending 
downfall of the last heathen world-empire, the 
Grecian-Macedonian, the eternal empire of the 
saints, namely the Jews, would begin. The four 
heathen world-empires had been typified by animal 
figures and he typifies the coming Jewish divine 
empire by the figure of a " Son of Man " swaying 
toward God on a cloud of heaven; probably he 

246 



Post-Exilic Judaism 

thinks of a divine Messiah such as is also to be 
found in the prophecies of the Sibyls and of the 
Book of Enoch. The old prophetic hope of a mes- 
sianic period of salvation for the people of Israel 
thus gets a new direction; it is no longer expected 
in the natural historical course of events but the 
government of God is to come from heaven by a 
sudden miraculous catastrophe which will put an 
end to all present mundane conditions. That re- 
mained the ruling opinion of Judaism and was then 
taken over by earliest Christianity. 

Concerning the person of the expected Messiah, 
the views always varied, so that at one time he is a 
supernatural being who shall appear from heaven 
(Sibyls, Enoch, Ezra), again, he is a human king 
of the house of David (Solomon, Psalms), and at 
another time, he is entirely absent and God alone 
is to rule in the coming aeon (Ascension of 
Moses). The one thing that is not changed is the 
catastrophic, miraculous character of the coming 
of God's realm. The character of his kingdom will 
correspond to its supernatural origin, for though it 
will be realized on earth, the pious of bygone days 
will rise from the dead in order to partake of its 
happiness, as the godless will rise to eternal tor- 
ment. The hope of resurrection, expressed for the 
first time in the Book of Daniel, was probably the 
result of Persian influence, and spread in close 
connection with the whole belief in the world-judg- 
ment and world-renewal. In the later Apocalypses, 

247 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

Enoch, Ezra, Baruch, there was added the idea of 
places of retribution in the world beyond for indi- 
vidual souls : Paradise for the pious and Gehenna or 
Hell for the godless. The idea of immortality and 
of a life of bliss or misery for souls after death 
had been alien to the old Israelitish faith, but in 
conjunction with the belief in resurrection, it had 
long existed in the Persian and Egyptian religions, 
in the Greek Mysteries, and among the Orphic and 
new Pythagorean societies. It is probable that 
from them single features of the gay picture of 
the world beyond, painted in the Jewish Apocalyp- 
ses, had been taken over. 

For beside the Oriental gnosticism, it was Greek 
religious philosophy which exercised a deep influ- 
ence upon the religious thinking of the Jews, espe- 
cially in Alexandria, during the last ante-Christian 
centuries. The book entitled " The Wisdom of Sol- 
omon " is already a product of the mixture of Jew- 
ish belief and Greek (Stoic and Platonic) philosophy ; 
but the ripest fruit is preserved for us in the writings 
of the Jewish philosopher and theologian, Philo of 
Alexandria, 20 B.C.-54 a.d. By means of a bold 
allegorical method of interpreting the sacred writ- 
ings of his people, reading into them the thoughts 
of Plato and the Stoics, he sought to harmonize the 
Jewish faith with the Greek trend of thought of his 
time. Philo's view of the world also was dualistic, 
but it was not the ruling opposition of the Jewish 
Apocalypses which set the present world over against 

248 



Post-Exilic Judaism 

the future world, but rather the Hellenistic opposi- 
tion which placed the sensual-visible over against 
the supersensual-ideal world. According to Philo, 
God is pure spirit, sublime beyond all the limitations 
of finiteness, the opposite of the material world, and 
therefore he cannot work upon it without mediation ; 
yet God is ever-active power and the perfect power 
from whom all good gifts, and only good, come im- 
mediately. For him, evils are merely the recognized 
activities of subordinate spirits. The mediation 
between God and the world is accomplished by 
bodyless powers or ideas or angels; at their head 
stands the Logos which is both the world ordering 
reason as well as the personified revelatory word. 
He is called God's " first-born Son and Image," a 
" second God,'' mediator of creation and all his- 
torical revelation, high priest and attorney (Para- 
clete) for men, their teacher, physician, helmsman, 
guide out of the strange land of earth into the 
heavenly home. For the human soul, as Philo con- 
forming to Plato teaches, has fallen from its upper 
world of ideas and been caught in the prison of a 
mundane body; its task, therefore, is to rise above 
the world of the senses and free itself so as to go 
to the world of ideas. Its own power, however, 
cannot possibly do this, but it can only be accom- 
plished by the divine aid of the mediator Logos 
(Here you have the theological transformation of 
the Platonic thought of the saving power of the 
divine-human " Eros.") It is the Logos who, in 

249 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

his merciful sympathy, descends into the souls of 
men and lifts them out of the stormy sea of the 
perishable world into community with the divine, 
consecrating them as temples of God. The Pla- 
tonic way to salvation, the striving after wisdom 
(philosophy), acquires, through Philo, a decidedly 
religious tinge: it is faith which surrenders with 
humility and joins the train of the Logos up- 
ward; he unites us with God; he is the solace of 
life, the abundance of hope, the only undeniable 
good, the heir of bliss. And with faith belongs, as 
the " twin-sister of piety," love. But faith reaches 
its highest point in that vision which in the moments 
of ecstatic inspiration enjoys here below and in ad- 
vance the bliss of the world beyond. 

These thoughts were not confined to Philo alone 
at his time ; many of the Jews who came in contact 
with Greek culture shared them with him. Soci- 
eties were formed for the common practice of this 
pious wisdom, for example the Therapeutae in 
lower Egypt and the Essenes in Palestine. That 
was a religious brotherhood which lived a life of 
labor and ascetic self -discipline in fraternal seclu- 
sion, — a late blossoming of those old puritans, the 
Rechabites, of whom you will remember that I 
spoke in the last lecture. But they had been modi- 
fied by the influences of the new Pythagorean and 
similar religious-social fraternities of the Greek 
world. The Essenes had the same regard for the 
laws of Moses and the strict care for ritual purity 

250 



Post-Exilic Judaism 

in common with the other Jews; they were differ- 
entiated from them, however, by the rejection of 
bloody sacrifices in the place of which they put their 
daily baths and their common sacramental meal, but 
most especially by celibacy and community of pos- 
sessions. They lived together in fraternity-houses 
under a hierarchical organization and strict disci- 
pline; during the week they busied themselves with 
the cultivation of the soil or simple handicrafts, 
while on the Sabbath they gathered together for the 
common edification, using the sacred writings as in- 
terpreted by the best-informed among them. The 
instruction was intended for the education of the 
members of the order in piety, purity, temperance, 
self-control, mercy and benevolence toward the 
poor and the sick. They gave freely out of the 
mass of their common store even to those who were 
not members of the order ; besides which they were 
active as physicians, soothsayers, pastors, and 
tutors wherever their counsel and their help was 
needed. What the cynical popular philosophers 
were to the Greek-Roman world and the Buddhist 
monks were in India and eastern Asia, that the 
Essenes were, approximately, in Palestine. We 
may not doubt but that their influence stretched far 
beyond the limits of the fraternity and, despite all 
Pharisaic sanctity dependent upon works, was active 
in keeping alive that inward piety of the Psalms 
among the " quiet ones of the land.'* This was the 
soil out of which Christianity grew. 

251 



XIV 

CHRISTIANITY 

The last lecture led us to the threshold of Chris- 
tianity. Inasmuch as we have but one more hour 
at our disposal, it will not be possible for me to 
present the origin and development of Christianity. 
In fact, I could only repeat what I said last winter 
in this room in my lectures on Christian Origins. 
In the meantime, those lectures have appeared in 
print and I refer you to them, confining myself to- 
day to a sketch of the faith of the Christian com- 
munity in the New Testament period. 

While doing that, however, we will guard care- 
fully against committing -the error so widespread 
to-day of reading into the biblical documents some- 
thing they do not contain and of putting aside 
everything which they do contain that is not en- 
tirely agreeable to our modern manner of thinking. 
It is in such fashion that the well-known Jesus 
romances originate, shooting up like mushrooms 
from the ground ; we may well grant those poets the 
privilege of doing such work, but they ought not 
to lay claim to the credit of telling actual history. 

Just that which to the modern consciousness is odd, 

252 



Christianity 

which in fact seems to offend it, just that usually 
reveals that which is historically most characteris- 
tic — the thing upon which the thorough-going suc- 
cess of the Christian faith at its time rested. Our 
first task is to grasp and to understand this char- 
acteristic in purely objective fashion. Not until 
then can the further question be asked: What of 
permanent importance is contained for us in this 
historically conditioned manner of thinking? 

But it is in no wise proper for the historian of 
religion so to arrange the historical matter that it 
conforms to the subjective standard of measure set 
up by himself or by contemporaneous taste ; nor may 
he distort it. Wha/t was Christianity as it is pre- 
sented to us in the New Testament? It was the 
belief in redemption through Christ ; that statement 
contains the other statement that a " Christianity of 
Christ " never existed, for Christ could not have 
believed in his own salvation by himself; that is 
simply an inner contradiction. Altogether, the 
Christian faith existed for the first time in the 
Christian community, wherewith the question what 
contribution the historical Jesus made thereto re- 
mains a matter by itself, which I cannot enter into 
to-day ; my task to-day is only a presentation of the 
original faith of the Christian Church and I sup- 
pose that I may count upon a general agreement 
when I say that from the beginning Christianity 
was a religion of salvation. But there had been 
such religions before it, and one might even say 

253 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

that about the time of the change of era almost 
every rehgion was, in one way or another, about to 
take on the nature of a rehgion of salvation. There- 
fore the question is this: What was it that consti- 
tuted the peculiar characteristic of the Christian 
religion of salvation? Its belief in salvation was 
the richest and the deepest, for it comprised three 
fundamental kinds: belief in future salvation, in 
past salvation, and in present salvation. Each of 
these forms was represented in some one of the 
religions or philosophies of that time, but Chris- 
tianity, — and therein consisted its distinguishing 
advantage, — gathered all three together into a 
higher unity and thus occupied a position higher 
than all the others. It was the reservoir, that sea 
into which all rivers emptied and in which they 
flowed together. 

First then : that Christianity is a religion of sal- 
vation in the sense of the hope of future salvation 
and that salvation not only and not in the first place 
of individual beings, but of human society as such, 
the message of a future salvation, and that, too, to 
be hoped for in the immediate future, salvation 
from the present miserable condition of the world, — 
the message of the dawn of a new world, of the 
coming of the kingdom of God in which universal 
peace, happiness and righteousness shall rule, — that 
was the great message that went forth from Pales- 
tine. And it caused a powerful echo, for it came 

254 



Christianity 

at the right time. The rule of the Romans had 
destroyed the glory and throttled the freedom of 
the ancient peoples ; the long civil wars had caused 
universal uncertainty and lawlessness, a brutalization 
and degeneration of social conditions had come to 
pass, and naturally everywhere the misery weighed 
heaviest on the lowest class of the people, upon the 
weary and the heavy-laden, upon the poor whom the 
gospels compare to a scattered, maltreated, and 
leaderless flock. Hence, throughout all the East 
and the West, the longing for a new world of peace 
and of righteousness. 

In an inscription from the year 9 b.c.^ recently 
discovered at Priene, there is a hymn to the Em- 
peror Augustus which furnishes a capital picture of 
the mood of that day. It reads : 

**This day, the birthday of Augustus, has given a new 
appearance to all the world which had been a prey to de- 
struction had there not emanated from him now born a 
universal fortune for all men, the beginning of a new life. 
Now is the day past when one must grieve that he has been 
born. Providence has sent this man to us and to coming 
generations as a savior, he will make an end to all struggle 
and mould things gloriously. In his appearance the hopes 
of the fathers are fulfilled. He has surpassed all former 
benefactors of humanity. It is impossible that a greater 
one can come. The birthday of the god has led the world 
up to the messages of joy. For the world, the birthday of 
the god has led up the messages of joy (evangels) attached 
to him. From the day of his birth a new reckoning of time 
must begin.'* 

Such were the hopes which the masses of the 
people reposed in the deified Caesars of Rome, and 

255 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

how they were disappointed! Though matters 
Went fairly well under Augustus, the disappoint- 
ment became more and more bitter under his 
successors. All too soon it became evident that 
these Caesars themselves were the incarnation of 
greed and violence under which the maltreated peo- 
ples groaned. Then there came a message from 
the midst of the people, not political in its import, 
but greatly treasured in religious regard for the 
sake of its old revelations and messianic hopes — 
from Palestine came the wonderful news that a 
saviour was expected, not an earthly but a heavenly 
king, who shortly before had dwelt upon the earth 
as a prophet, a man of the people and a friend of 
the poor and oppressed, one who took pity on the 
leaderless flock and promised to the poor, the weep- 
ing, and the starving the bliss of the kingdom of 
God, his satisfaction and consolation — a friend of 
men, who had taken up the least of them and the 
rejected as their humane teacher and healing phy- 
sician; while, on the other hand, he had hurled re- 
proving words at the satiated rich, the arrogantly 
just and the proud superiors, for which reason, they 
had rejected and cursed him and, in the end, nailed 
him upon the cross; but then did God himself 
miraculously resurrect the crucified one and, ele- 
vating him to the heavenly throne, place him on His 
right hand, whence he is about to return as the vic- 
torious savior of his own. ' 
What the Jews had long hoped of their Messiah, 

256 



Christianity 

the Persians of their savior, Saoshyant, the Egyp- 
tians, the Greeks and the Romans of Serapis, 
^sculapius, and Hercules, their deities of salva- 
tion, or, finally, even of the deified Caesars — all of 
this was here surpassed by the announcement of the 
divine messianic king of the Christian, he who had 
been a man and had tasted human sorrow, yea 
had drained the cup to the very lees, but even now 
had become more than man, a divine being, equipped 
with omnipotence, and established as the savior and 
judge of men. The double nature of this announce- 
ment from Palestine, that the savior who would re- 
deem the pious would, at the same time, be the 
judge of the godless, was of greatest importance 
for the world of that time. That is what gave 
to this announcement its forceful, rousing, moral 
power. Through it the feeling of guilt which 
has been called into being by the very need of the 
time was intensified to the extreme; for the certain, 
the proud and the indifferent, the thought of judg- 
ment was a motive to self-examination, reform, 
purification, and betterment of life. Even in later 
centuries, after the Church had long given up the 
hope of a mundane messianic kingdom and an early 
visible coming of their Lord, the thought of the 
great day of judgment of the Lord was powerful 
enough to make them quake inwardly. 

"Dies irae, dies ilia 
Solvet saecla in favilla, 
Teste David et Sibylla ! *' 
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Religion and Historic Faiths 

Now let us ask the question: What importance 
can this earliest Christian belief in salvation, a hope 
of an earthly divine kingdom of righteousness, of 
peace and of joy, have for us to-day? It is self- 
evident that the supernatural and the catastrophic 
parts of it fall away for us because history itself 
has shown that to be an error of the period. Never- 
theless, there does remain for us the early Christian 
belief in the coming of the heavenly kingdom on 
earth ; it remains as a belief in the right and victori- 
ous realization of the ethical-social ideals of human 
society. With this difference: we no longer ex- 
pect its realization by a miracle descending from 
heaven, but we find in it the ethical task given to 
us by God, the task of honestly cooperating in per- 
son for the realization of that ideal and we hope 
that this labor in the cause of the divine pur- 
pose of the world must be of service in the his- 
tory of the world. That is the import of faith 
in future salvation. The same is true of the belief 
in a future judgment. Although we no longer 
believe that Christ will descend from heaven to 
earth and devote some day to formal judgment, 
nevertheless, the truth does remain that divine 
righteousness ever and again, in the grave crises 
and in the winnowing judgments of national life, 
has revealed itself and will reveal itself in the 
future. To our thinking, the single miraculous 
catastrophe divides into the ever-recurring catas- 
trophes of the life of the peoples, returning accord- 

258 



Christianity 

ing to the eternal laws of the order of the world, 
catastrophes in which that which is impure is de- 
stroyed by the test of fire and that alone persists 
which is genuine, true, and good. " The history of 
the world is the judgment of the world 1 '* 

This future salvation of society was no more im- 
portant to the men living at the beginning of our 
era than the hope of a blessed existence in the world 
beyond for the individual soul. This hope was 
based upon legends relating certain facts of salva- 
tion in the past, in which the guarantee of future 
bliss was given to those pious souls who had been 
united to their god of salvation. Of course you 
remember the legends of Osiris-Isis, Istar-Tam- 
muz, Demeter-Kore, to which must be added Attis- 
Cybele, Adonis-Aphrodite, and others. As we 
have repeatedly seen, these legends all revolve about 
the simple thought of the death and resurrection of 
nature and the gods governing it. In the myth, 
the annual experience of the Autumn and the Spring 
became a poem telling of the one-time fate of the 
nature-god who died a violent death and returned 
again to life. And this myth of the past fate of 
the god was then moved into a timeless present by 
a corresponding custom, the festal rite, by which 
the death and the resurrection of the god was annu- 
ally celebrated. By the ceremonies of this celebra- 
tion, it was believed that a mysterious communitjj 
with the god had been achieved so that the wor- 

259 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

shipper became a participant in the death-conquer- 
ing life and thus became certain of a blissful life 
to come. We have many reports of such festal 
customs in Egypt, Syria and Phrygia made by 
Plutarch, Apuleius, Lucian, Firmicus Matemus, 
and others. Lucian of Antioch, the well-known 
author, describes the celebration of the Syrian 
Spring-festival about as follows: When the red 
anemones blossomed in the Spring and the waters 
of Orontes were dyed red by the ochre earth of the 
mountain from which it flows, then it was said that 
the god Adonis, '' the lord,'' had been torn by the 
wild boar and killed; and his death was celebrated 
by wild songs of lamentation sung by the women 
and the solemn burial of his corpse in the shape of 
a wooden image. But on the second or, accord- 
ing to other customs, on the third or fourth day 
after his death suddenly the message sounded on 
the air : the lord lives, Adonis is risen again ! Then 
he (his image) emerged in the body from the grave 
in which he had been laid and rose in the air (by 
means of some mechanism — a ceremony which, in 
the Greek Church and, as I have learned, in some 
places also in the Roman Cathloic Church is cus- 
tomary to this day in similar fashion on Easter 
night) ; then according to the report of the Phry- 
gian Attis celebration made by Firmicus Maternus, 
the priest would anoint the mouth of the lamenting 
with oil and speak the consolatory words : " Be 
solaced, ye pious, since the god is saved, salvation 

260 



Christianity 

from our distress will be our lot" — just as the 
Christians sing to this day, " Jesus lives and I live 
with Him." 

Such was the Easter festival as it was annually- 
celebrated in Antioch, the Syrian capital, from of 
old. To this same Antioch, soon after the begin- 
nings of the messianic community of Jerusalem, 
men from Cyprus and Cyrene had come and had 
begun to declare the message of the crucified and 
resurrected Christ, not only to the Jews but also 
to the heathen ; and the heathen listened to them and 
some of them became converts to the new lord, 
Christ. Thus it was that the first mixed community 
of Jews and heathen was established there, and 
there, for the first time, the new name ^' Christians " 
was given to them as is reported in the Acts of the 
Apostles, chapter xi, verses 20-26. So the com- 
munity there was looked upon as something new, 
something that was neither Jewish nor heathen. 
What might it have been by which they recognized 
this? Naturally, it must have been their customs, 
which must have been other than those of the mes- 
sianic community composed formerly only of Jews. 
But from where may these new customs by which 
this community was recognized as a new commu- 
nity of Christians have come? As religious cus- 
toms are never created out of nothing, we may well 
accept it as a fact that the heathen-Christians of 
Antioch preserved the old customs by which they 
had previously celebrated the death and resurrec- 

261 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

tion of Adonis, their lord, and now transferred them 
to their new lord, Jesus. Thus it came about of 
itself that Christ seemed to them to be the lord who 
achieved the salvation of his own by his death and 
his resurrection and became the savior of the world. 
And now the Apostle Paul comes into this new com- 
munity, having been called for by Barnabas at Tar- 
sus, his native city; he soon felt at home there and 
his work was so blessed that the community grew 
visibly. Certainly it was no more than natural that 
Paul, for his part, permitted the customs and ideas 
which he found existing in the heathen-Christian 
community at Antioch — otherwise, how could his 
activity have been blessed ? It was the more natural 
because everything which he found harmonized 
exactly with the manner in which he himself had ar- 
rived at the faith in Christ. From a fanatical perse- 
cutor of the messianic community, Paul had been 
converted into an Apostle of Christ by the experi- 
ence of a vision in which he had seen the crucified 
Jesus as the heavenly Christ and son of God ; there- 
fore his death had not been that of a criminal, but a 
death-sacrifice in which God had given his son for 
the sake of our sins, so that we might be saved 
from the present wicked world. About the life of 
Jesus, the prophet of earth, Paul knew very little, 
just as little as did the heathen-Christians of Anti- 
och ; therefore it was the more natural that he agreed 
with them in the conviction that the death and the 
resurrection of Christ, the son of God, was the one 



Christianity 

fact of redemption and the content of the new re- 
ligion of salvation. 

In his theology, Paul further developed and 
grounded this belief. For him, Christ is no longer 
the prophet and the struggling hero of a Jewish 
messianic realm, as the early community thought, 
but for him, he is the suffering hero of a mystical 
salvation of the world, his death is a guilt offering 
for the reconciliation of God and the forgiveness 
of human guilt, his resurrection the conquest of the 
powers of death and of hell, the victorious resur- 
rection of the divine life, the beginning of a new 
humanity vivified by the spirit of God. In the well- 
known passage, I Corinthians, xv, he cries triumph- 
antly " Death is swallowed up in victory. O death 
where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory? 
The sting of death is sin ; and the strength of sin is 
the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the 
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ ! " Thus 
the gospel of Paul became the preaching of the 
crucified and resurrected mediator, the Lord who 
IS the spirit, the Lord of the living and the dead. 
This victor over death and hell, it is evident, can no 
longer be an earthly man, the " Christ after the 
flesh/' for he was buried and remained in the grave, 
but that which now lives is, according to Paul, 
something much higher, it is the Lord, the spirit 
which maketh alive and maketh free God's first- 
born Son, the man from heaven, the second Adam 
from whom a new humanity took its beginning; in 

263 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

a word, it is the ideal man in whom there is neither 
Jew nor Greek, but all are one, in whom the idea 
of man is resurrected to life. This divine man, so 
Paul teaches, God sent down to earth, had him take 
on a body of sinful flesh, so that he should sufifer 
death and, by his guiltless vicarious suffering and 
dying, take the sting from death, pay its tribute to 
sin, render justice to the law, but therewith and at 
the same time do away with all of these evil powers 
once for all, break their yoke and loosen their fet- 
ters, overcome death for all, and bring life and 
immortal existence for all. 

The Christian message of salvation by means of 
the sacrificial death of Christ, the Son of God, was 
powerful in its effect upon the heathen world. The 
penitential rites, by which the intensified feeling of 
guilt of the period sought to find some relief, the 
ceremonies of the mysteries which were piously 
entered into as the death and resurrection of a myth- 
ical god in order to hold a guarantee of one's own 
salvation and beatitude — all of this found fulfill- 
ment here; nay more, it was far surpassed. It was 
fulfilled, for here, too, was a superhuman, a heav- 
enly being which God himself had made into a sacri- 
fice in order to purchase therewith the salvation of 
the world. This being, however, had not suffered 
death as a natural fate, as in the case of the mythical 
gods; in free obedience, and out of love, Christ, 
the Son of God, had given up his earthly life so as 
to save the world; it was the ethical deed of self- 

264 



Christianity 

sacrifice on the part of a divine man which had 
saved humanity from sin, the law, death and the 
devil, which had robbed the old ritual and myth- 
ical services of sacrifice and atonement of their 
value and had created the new tie of the community 
with God in the spirit of childship. In this way, it 
is possible to comprehend the wonderful and all- 
subversive efifect of Paul's preaching of the cruci- 
fied and resurrected Lord, Jesus; without that, the 
victory of the Christian faith over the heathen 
world would hardly be thinkable. 

It is a different matter, however, when we turn 
to the question: What meaning has this faith in a 
past salvation through the sacrificial death of Christ 
for us to-day? Naturally, there is much to be said 
on this subject, and our time limits to-day force me 
to confine myself to a few suggestions. I think that 
what was said before concerning the belief in a 
future salvation, will be found to be applicable here : 
that which was mythical and supernatural in the 
form of the early Christian belief naturally drops 
away, while the kernel of the truth cannot but per- 
sist. What else can this truth be than the eternal 
law of the world-order, that through death is the 
way to life, that the " old Adam," the sensual, selfish 
human being, must die if the divine, spiritual self 
of the personality, the son of God within us, is to 
be and to do. The other truth, also, will remain, 
that as in all previous times, the salvation of human- 
ity and acquisition of all permanent means of re- 

265 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

demption, rested upon the moral sacrifices of obedi- 
ence and of love, made by the individual for the 
good of all, so in the days to come salvation v^ill 
require the same foundation. Here, too, for our 
thinking, the one-time miracle of the myth, the sac- 
rificial death of a unique supernatural Son of God, 
breaks up into a series of repeated happenings; 
namely, the endless, historical series of all the sac- 
rifices of men, v^ho demonstrated thereby that they 
v^ere true children of God, urged by the spirit of 
God, thoughtless of themselves, but in active and 
suffering love, surrendered themselves for the sal- 
vation of men, for the good cause of God and His 
kingdom. Upon these sacrifices of obedience, fidel- 
ity and love made by generation after generation, 
finally rests all the progress of humanity, the salva- 
tion of man from the fetters of the crude nature- 
powers, the acquisition of all permanent ideal pos- 
sessions which make life worth the living. The 
history of the world, therefore, is not only the judg- 
ment of the world, but it is, also, the salvation of 
the world. That is the truth of the gospel of Paul, 
which can not be eliminated from Christianity with- 
out fatally mutilating it. For this Pauline procla- 
mation of a past salvation has demonstrated itself 
historically to be the way that did lead beyond the 
mere hope of a future salvation which grew more 
and more problematical with each year of the delay 
in its fulfillment, up to a certainty of present and 
inner salvation. 

266 



Christianity- 
How can a salvation which is regarded as a thing 
completed in the past, become an efficient experience 
of the present? The answer to this question had 
been prepared in many ways and Christianity again 
had but to enter into the orchards and gather the 
ripe fruit. The rites of the mysteries served to 
transport the votaries into a present and a permanent 
union with the God of salvation. The bond of union 
was partly established by calling the name of the 
God of salvation, in which name all of his power to 
bless was mysteriously hidden ; again, rites of puri- 
fication and immersion designed to bring about the 
actual wiping-away of sin and guilt and all things 
demonic were employed ; finally, they ate consecrated 
food and drank consecrated draughts in the belief 
that the life of the god was actually present in the 
body in them, so that in, with and through the sen- 
suous matter, the votary seemed to have taken on 
the god's body. Hence, those who had been conse- 
crated by those rites spoke of themselves as " reborn 
forever '' (renatus in externum). 

It would have been marvellous if these rites had 
not forced their entry into the Christian community. 
Certainly, Paul was not the first one to introduce 
them ; without doubt he found that they were being 
employed by the community of Antioch. There- 
upon he brought them into closest relation to his 
doctrine of Christ and salvation and gave them a 
deep, ethical-religious meaning, far beyond any 
ideas which had been attached to those rites by the 

267 



/ 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

heathen. Baptism took on the meaning of the im- 
planting of Christ's death and resurrection for the 
purpose of participation in both: the former man 
of sin is buried by the immersion and the new man 
rises to Hfe with God and for God, a Hfe no longer 
ruled over by sin and death. The primitive Chris- 
tian love-feast took on the mystical meaning of the 
eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ, 
whereby a community of love and life is established 
between the head and the members and between one 
member and the others. By these sacramental 
means, just that is represented and performed which 
belief in Christ's name in itself is, namely, a being 
in Christ, a state of being filled with his spirit by 
which the believer becomes what Jesus, the Son of 
God, was. *' Ye are all sons of God through the 
faith in Christ Jesus.'' The connection with Christ 
is so close that Paul can say : " No longer do I live, 
but Christ lives in me." " If one be in Christ, then 
is he a new creature, the old is departed, behold he 
IS become new." Above all, for this new man, there 
has passed away the world of the law with its lit- 
eral observance of the ordinances, the threats and 
the curses resting upon transgressors — all of that is 
done away with ; it does not hold for such as have 
become new men in Christ, free men of the spirit. 
For " the Lord is spirit and where the spirit of the 
Lord is, there is freedom." Consequently, the spir- 
itual man is first of all a free man, who has within 

himself the source of true knowledge and the motive 

268 



Christianity 

power of good. '* Love is the fulfillment of the 
law " ; the holy spiritual motive takes the place of 
external force. The same holds of knowledge: 
" The spiritual man judges all and is judged by 
none/' for " the spirit, which is given to us, searches 
all, even the deeps of God." In this close commu- 
nity of spirit with God, which is the faith accord- 
ing to Paul, all unfreedom ceases and heteronomy 
and subordination under strange ordinance and 
authority have ended; this faith is not a blind ac- 
ceptance, it is the voluntary surrender of the heart 
to the experience within and clear recognition of 
the will of God, who seeks our salvation; it is the 
truly " reasonable service of God." 

Therefore, John can also say : " This is life eter- 
nal that they should know Thee, the only true God 
and him whom thou didst send, Jesus Christ." The 
knowledge of God after its revelation in Christ, that 
is eternal life, the salvation now present. Accord- 
ing to John, it is true, Christ is not identical with 
the man Jesus, but something far more comprehen- 
sive : the eternal word of God or the Logos, which 
had been with God from the beginning and had 
been the power through which all things came into 
being, the life of the world and the light of men, — 
which had revealed itself in a unique and miraculous 
manner in Jesus but did not confine itself to his mor- 
tal existence, and after Jesus reveals itself ever 
anew in that spirit which leads the community on in 
truth. For this reason, the belief in Jesus, that 

269 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

eternal Logos and Son of God, means present pos- 
session of eternal life, according to John. The 
believers " have even now gone over from death to 
life and taste of death no more " ; their faith is the 
power which has overcome the world. That does 
not imply that the world is devoid of value and 
reality for the Christians as it is for the Buddhists ; 
but rather, the world is the object of a positive 
moral task, the material which is to be shaped by 
the activity of a patient and serving love into the 
kingdom of God. The love, which Philo had called 
the twin-sister of faith, is, according to Paul, the 
active energy of faith and the most precious gift 
of grace, which will never fail though prophecies, 
tongues and knowledge shall cease. (I Cor. xiii, 8). 
And John condenses the entire substance of the 
Christian faith in that deep saying : '^ God is love, 
and whoso is in love, is in God and God in him." 
If it is faith which makes man the master of all 
things and frees him from those things which other- 
wise enslave him, it is love which unites him to the 
whole and makes him the voluntary servant of all. 
Thus faith and love are the actual salvation of the 
present, bridging the past revelations of the divine 
spirit with the hoped-for coming fulfillment and 
completion. 

The mythical ideas of past and present miracles 
were naturally the outer form of the belief in salva- 
tion, necessary for the old Church as they are for 
many men to this day; but, from the beginning, 

270 



Christianity 

they were merely the shell, in which lay hidden the 
actual experience of the present redeeming power 
of faith and love. Though we of to-day can no 
longer hold these mythical notions to be literal 
truth, we may well recognize them as symbols and 
means of representation of the permanent truth of 
the Christian idea of salvation. Let us be careful 
that we do not lose the ideal content, or lessen or 
weaken it by an all-too-hasty throwing aside of the 
symbolical shell, before we have actually grasped 
their deep meaning. If, from the beginning, the 
Christian community went beyond the earthly life 
of the Jewish prophet Jesus, and, for the actual 
object of their faith took the heavenly man, the 
eternal Son of God, the divine Logos which is the 
light of all men — ^truly, it was no chance inquisitive- 
ness but it was an inner necessity ; it was the invol- 
untary recognition of the cardinal truth that the 
redeeming power is not a temporal thing, not even 
the most excellent man, but that it is the eternal 
divine human spirit of the true and the good. That 
alone can become an immediate inner experience 
for us ; that alone can produce an unconditioned cer- 
tainty, free from all temporal and finite limitations ; 
that alone can be a universally-valid norm and 
authority for all men. This divine-human spirit is 
the truth that frees and the love that binds, opening 
the heart to it with a faith that knows, consecrating 
to it a life of active labor, of serving love, and of 

waiting with patience and hope — that h the actual 

271 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

salvation of the present for which all the figures and 
stories and legends and poems of the past are but 
means of visualization, symbols and parables : " The 
finite is ever an image." 

The Christian belief in salvation gathered up in 
itself all the truths contained in the religions and 
the philosophies of its time. With the religions of 
^the mysteries, Christianity shares the mystical en- 
thusiasm, that uplifted and intensified feeling of 
being-in-God and the implied hope of a blissful 
beyond; it converted the mystical means of salva- 
tion into symbols of a moral rebirth and of brotherly 
love. With the philosophy of its time, Christianity 
shares the reasonable worship of God in moral 
knowledge and practices. Again, it shares with 
Buddhism, the abnegation of self and the world, 
the quiet peace of resignation; and also, with the 
religion of Zarathustra, it shares a courageous 
struggle against godlessness of every nature and a 
joyous hope of the victory of God's cause in the 
world. With Judaism, Christianity shares belief 
in the one sublime and holy God, the judge of men 
and of nations, and in the coming of his kingdom 
on earth ; but with Plato, it shares also belief in that 
God, who is the highest good and the unenvying 
source of all that is true and good, as also belief in 
the divine mediator Eros, that power of inspiration 
resident in us, and love of those ideals coming from 
above. With the Stoics, finally, Christianity shares 
that inner freedom from the world, the calmness of 



Christianity 

firm character, the power of self-determining will 
(autonomous) and the liberality of the humanitar- 
ian idea which reaches out over all nations and all 
classes; but it gives life to this cold and proud vir- 
tue of the Stoics by belief that the world is God's, 
and by love which renders the service of brothers 
a joy, and by the hope that all struggle and all suf- 
fering misery of the time will one day be resolved 
into the peace of eternity. 

Thus it is that Christianity became the religion 
of the religions, conquered the old world and led up 
to the new. 



^Z 



XVI 



ISLAM 



IsLAM^ the religion of Mohammed, is the latest 
among the historical religions, a late after-impulse 
of the religion-forming power of the Semitic race. 
Founded by the prophet Mohammed under Jewish 
and Christian influences among the half-barbaric 
Arabic people in the seventh century, Islamism 
shares the monotheistic, rigidly theocratic and 
legalistic character of Judaism, without its national 
limitation ; with Christianity, it shares the claim and 
propagating impulse of world-religion, but without 
the wealth of religious thought and motives and 
without the mobility and the capacity for develop- 
ment which belongs to a world-religion. It might be 
maintained, probably, that Islamism is the Jewish 
idea of theocracy carried out on a larger scale by the 
youthful national vigor of the Arabians, well, cal- 
culated to discipline raw barbaric peoples, but a 
brake on the progress of free human civilization. 

The religion of the Arabs before Mohammed was 
the ancient Semitic heathenism, which had pre- 
served itself longest in its ancient form among 
them. The separate tribes had their indiviciual god§ 

^74 



Islam 

which differed from one another only in the forms 
of worship in use at the local sanctuaries. Allah 
was the species-name for god, and even before 
Mohammed, he was placed above the others as an 
independent god, the highest of all; the oldest of 
these gods, Allat (Mistress), Utza and Manat, 
were subordinated to Allah, as his daughters. 
Beside these and several other nature-gods, the 
Dschinns, good and evil ispirits, played a gteat 
role in the popular religion. As dwelling-places 
and manifestations of the presence of the gods, the 
cult regarded stones preferably, but trees and wells 
served also; to them sanctuaries were attached, at 
which the separate tribes met once a year for an 
adoration of the god in common. The Caaba, the 
sanctuary at Mecca stood in especially high regard ; 
it was a four-cornered house, into the wall of which 
there had been built a black stone, as the fetish of 
the god who was native to those parts (Hobal or 
Allah). This sanctuary belonged to the tribe of 
the Koreishites; with especial solemnity, they cele- 
brated the annual holy festival, and caravans from 
all of Central Arabia came thither. With this cele- 
bration, a lively market for trade was combined, and 
there wares and thoughts, as well as the latest pro- 
ductions of the song-writers, were exchanged. This 
worldly activity predominated at these festivals; 
true, the ancient rites were attended, but the faith 
in the old gods was beginning to disintegrate in the 
sixth century. So much the more could the mona- 

275 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

theistic faith of the Jews and Christians, scattered 
here and there among the colonies or living in some 
districts of Arabia as hermits, wield an attractive 
influence upon the more earnest spirits among them. 
Before Mohammed's day, there were several such 
men among the Arabs who had thrown off the wor- 
ship of heathen idols, believed in one God and his 
world judgment, and lived serious ascetic lives; 
they were known as " Hanifites,'^ which is probably 
derived from the Syriac word for heretics or the 
Arabic word for separatists. The greatest number 
of them were found at Mecca and Medina, and 
though they took no steps toward the formation of 
a congregation or the dissemination of their beliefs 
by propaganda, nevertheless, they were the forerun- 
ners of Islamism and paved the way for the work of 
Mohammed. 

Born about 570 a.d.^ Mohammed belonged to the 
ruling tribe of the Koreishites at Mecca. Early 
orphaned, he grew up in the poorest of circum- 
stances, until he entered the service of Khadijah, the 
widow of a rich merchant, whom he married when 
he was twenty-five years of age and with whom he 
lived a happy married life until her death. Fre- 
quently his mercantile pursuits led him to Syria and 
Palestine, and there he came in contact with Jews 
and Christians. But the first stirrings of his reli- 
gious awakenings came from the pious Hanifites of 
Mecca. He began to withdraw into solitude and 

reflect upon the folly of the heathen, who lived 

276 



Islam 

along certain of their beliefs, thoughtless of the 
judgment of God. Thus, he, too, became a Hanifite 
and sought salvation for his soul in *' Islam," that 
means, self-surrender to the one true God. The 
first impulse to disseminate this faith in his environ- 
ment came from a vision, v^hich, in his fortieth year, 
he experienced during a night-watch on the holy- 
mountain near Mecca. An angel, bearing a scroll 
in his hand, appeared to him and commanded: 
" Read, in the name of thy Lord, v^ho, out of a 
single drop, hath created men. Read, for thy Lord 
is the Almighty, who hath taught by this writing, 
what man hath not known. Yea, verily, man walk- 
eth in his folly, when he opines that he is sufficient 
unto himself; to thy Lord, must they all return." 
This first vision roused him to great excitement ; he 
believed himself possessed by a Dschinn, and his 
restlessness was the more oppressive, because a space 
of time elapsed before the reappearance of the vis- 
ion. Then it did come again and in the form of 
a positive command : " Rise and Warn. Glorify 
thy Lord and wait upon him." This command 
came repeatedly and finally Mohammed was con- 
vinced that he was called by God to be the prophet 
to his people. That this conviction was an earnest 
one, and rested, just as much as with the prophets 
of Israel, upon an irresistible pressure of conscience 
which seemed to him to be divine revelation, there 
can be no doubt ; and the fact that later pronounce- 
ments of the prophet, which he also enunciated as 

277 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

" revelations/' were undeniably the outcome of un- 
hampered reflection and the prudent weighing of 
circumstances, does not alter matters in the least. 

At first Mohammed preached in the narrow circle 
of his relatives and his friends. He did not seek 
to found a new religion, but rather to reintroduce 
Abraham's ancient belief in God, as it was written 
in the heavenly book, from which the prophets of 
the Jews and the Christians had ever received their 
revelations. He demanded of his adherents that 
they submit to Allah, as the highest master and 
righteous judge, before whose judgment-seat they 
would all have to appear; they should abandon 
their heathen blasphemy, they should pray regularly 
and give alms without hope of profit or reward. 
New revelations soon impelled him to appear 
publicly before his fellow-citizens and condemn 
their heathenism. They hearkened not to him, but 
derided him as a madman, as one possessed. 
Derision roused his sensibility, the temper of his 
preaching became more acrid, he threatened his 
countrymen with the terrible punishments which 
God meted out here and beyond. The bitterness 
against him was heightened by this method, until 
it resulted in deadly hatred and serious persecutions. 
This served but to confirm the prophet in the con- 
viction that his calling was divine and the impres- 
sion of loyalty to conviction in the face of dire op- 
pression brought enthusiastic followers, especially 
from among the poor and the enslaved. However, 

278 



Islam 

at Mecca, where the mass of the people were bound 
to the rehgion of former days by the material bene- 
fits accruing to a much-visited place of pilgrimage, 
the prophet's cause seemed hopeless. At this time, 
a host of friends from Medina, making a festal pil- 
grimage to Mecca, arrived and were so enthused by 
the imposing impression of his personality, that 
they solemnly assured him of their loyalty in life and 
death and induced him to move over to Medina. 
This was the decisive turning-point for his cause; 
from this flight (Hegira) in the year 622, dates the 
beginning of Islamism as a religious community. 

In his new surroundings amid greater successes, 
the activity of Mohammed took new directions. In 
Mecca, he had been the prophet of a religious faith, 
without religious motives, but in Medina, he soon 
became the founder and ruler of a religious-political 
commonalty, which formed the basis of the the- 
ocracy of Islamism. His great energy and pru- 
dence soon subjected all the inhabitants of the city 
to his social arrangement and ritual commands. 
Praying became a form of military exercise; the 
mosque became the great exercise-ground and the 
ritual was the drill-system of Islam, which thus 
implanted solidarity and a strict discipline in its 
armies. Alms became a regular tax and formed 
the basis of the financeering of the new theocracy. 
At the same time with the growth of this closer 
alliance of the faithful, there grew up the exclusion 
of those not of the faith, particularly against the 

279 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

Jews, whom Mohammed had regarded before as his 
friends, but whom, after his assumption of the role 
of political organizer of the Arabic theocracy, he 
treated as uncomfortable rivals of his idea and 
enemies of his autocratic rule. Mohammed's 
foundation of a state on the basis of a common 
religious impulse as a substitute for the old heathen 
anarchy of the Arabs, was the greatest deed of his 
life and most decisive for the future; the congrega- 
tion of Medina was the instrument, their heroic 
faith was the power, through which Islamism 
achieved its world-historical successes. It is his 
work at Medina which makes up the greatest part 
of his historical importance, and here the prophet 
was concealed for the most part behind the states- 
man. As such, Mohammed undeniably performed 
a great work, but, naturally, he was not choice in 
the selection of his means. Many a deed of cruelty, 
revenge and deceit may have to be judged more 
mildly from the standpoint of the popular morals 
of the Arabs; but in the character-picture of a 
prophet and founder of a religion (for to him the 
title is more applicable than to any one else), they 
will and must remain dark spots. 

Not only did the fall of Mecca, which decided the 
victory of Mohammed over the Arabs, serve as the 
ground-work for subsequent Islamic conquests, but 
it also deeply influenced the inner configuration of 
the new religion. Of this victory, too, the ancient 
saying was true: Vicfa victor es cepif. Inasmuch 

280 



Islam 

as Mohammed embodied the heathen rites of the 
Caaba at Mecca and the celebration of the pilgrim- 
festival which was native there into his religion, he 
made a concession to the old heathenism of the 
Arabs which crassly contradicted the fundamental 
monotheistic and universalistic idea of his religion. 
Glossing it over by the claim that Abraham had 
founded these heathen customs was a crude decep- 
tion, conscious or unconscious. The real motive of 
this retrogression to fetishistic superstition lay in 
a prudent regard of the prejudices and advantages 
of his countrymen, whose city was thereby elevated 
in quite different fashion from before into the cen- 
tral point of national culture. In the proportion 
that Islamism became bound to the Arabic capital 
as its permanent center, its claim to the title of a 
general " world-religion " became invalid ; at bot- 
tom, it always remained an enlarged national- 
Arabic theocracy by force of arms, just as the 
Jewish-messianic realm was to become a national- 
Jewish theocracy. As a national theocracy, Islam- 
ism did become a mighty power in the world's 
history, but its influence upon the religious devel- 
opment of mankind was rather a hindrance than a 
help. From the beginning, its religious content 
was limited and impure; and its " revelation '' and 
book-faith was a hindrance to all healthy progress. 

In the beginning, the sayings of Mohammed were 
preserved by word of mouth only ; toward the close 

281 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

of the first generation of his congregation, they 
were committed to writing. In order to harmonize 
the different readings of the various collections of 
sayings, Caliph Othman the Third ordered Zaid, 
Mohammed's secretary, to make an official edition, 
which resulted in the sacred book of Islamism, the 
Koran. Throughout, the style is rhymed prose; 
the sayings of the older period are laconic, after 
the fashion of oracular sayings, but they soon be- 
come more prolix, full of artificial rhetoric and 
endless repetitions — dry and wearisome reading for 
a healthy taste. Naturally, this never hindered the 
faithful of Islam from regarding the book as ex- 
actly that which it laid claim to being, namely, the 
unmediated word of God, which had existed from 
eternity as the " uncreated word " in a celestial 
original and had been revealed to Mohammed by 
the angel Gabriel. Alongside the Koran, Islamism 
holds a second rule of faith — ^tradition, Sonna. 
This contains precise ordinances concerning every 
manner of external ceremonial as well as civic and 
personal life ; all of these, often without foundation, 
are traced back to utterances of Mohammed. Be- 
sides, the traditions contain a mass of miraculous 
legends, of which the Koran had none, since Mo- 
hammed expressly discountenanced the rage for 
miracles and pointed out the great wonders of God 
in nature. h^. 

Islamic teaching rests upon five pillars, which 
come from Mohammed himself: (i). Belief in the 

282 



Islam 

all-one God, Allah, and in Mohammed as his 
prophet; (2). Prayers five times a day in set form, 
with the face turned toward Mecca; (3). The giv- 
ing of alms, later regulated as a poor-tax; (4). 
Fasts, later limited to the daylight hours of the 
month Ramadhan; (5). Pilgrimages to Mecca, a 
duty devolving on every believer at least once in his 
life. The greater the poverty of spiritual content 
in the teaching, the more minute are the details of 
the ceremonial prescribed, down to the most minute. 
The fundamental dogma is that of the unity of 
God ; but concerning the nature of God, Mohammed 
made no deeper reflections. He conceived God as 
the supermundane, almighty ruler, similar to an 
Oriental despot ; terrible in his anger and then again 
benevolent, delaying judgment in his benevolence, 
arbitrary in reward and punishment, with a will 
irresistible as inconceivable, demanding blind sub- 
mission of men and even then his grace uncertain. 
This all-deciding freedom of God's despotic will 
was expressed, though without logical completeness, 
in the form of an absolute predestination. Mo- 
hammed had no difficulty in contributing even im- 
moral features, such as revenge and deception, 
which naturally belong to the typical Oriental despot, 
to his idea of God. This gloomy view of God 
corresponds to a pessimistic view of the world; 
the world is compared to a dung-heap full of decay- 
ing bones, and its misery is so great that only the 
tortures of hell exceed it. Just a^ horrible as the 

283 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

hell, so joyous is the description of the heavenly 
paradise, whose drinking-bouts shall compensate the 
pious for the prescribed abstinence from the enjoy- 
ment of wine during life on earth. 

God, it is said, has revealed himself through 
thousands of prophets in all times ; most prominent 
among these are Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, 
Jesus and Mohammed; and Mohammed is not only 
the last but the greatest of them, he alone being 
destined for all men. To him, God has revealed 
Himself mainly through the angel Gabriel, but 
partly also, in direct instructions given in heaven, to 
which he (Mohammed) had been transported bodily 
at various times. Beyond this, Mohammed made no 
claim to supernatural attributes, not even that of 
moral perfection; he had erred and sinned and 
needed forgiveness like other men. He sought to 
be only a preacher, a monitor, the first of the faithful 
(Moslem) ; his mission had been fulfilled in the rev- 
elation of the sacred book, and it is not his province 
to be a permanent mediator between God and men. 
An old tradition has him say : " Praise me not, as 
Jesus, the son of Marjam was praised." The 
acknowledgment of Jesus as a prophet who had 
gone before, did not hinder Mohammed in any way 
from a denial of Christianity, which he pronounced 
as a falsification of the true teaching of Jesus. The 
doctrine that Jesus was the Son of God, was partic- 
ularly offensive to him ; he thought that that was a 
palpable lie, because he was certain that God had no 

284 



Islam 

wife; he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity which 
he conceived as a heavenly family consisting of a 
father, mother and son (probably one of the Ori- 
ental sects through their gnostic mythology had 
given him that notion, just as the six principal 
prophets are reminiscent of the Elkesaitic-clemen- 
tinian gnosticism. 

To the conflict over the regular succession to the 
prophet, the origin of the sect of Shiahs is to be 
ascribed ; from the end of the seventh century, they 
were dominant in Persia. They would acknowl- 
edge only Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, the 
husband of his daughter Fatima, and their descend- 
ants as the proper " Imam, heads of the congrega- 
tion." This schism, at first merely political in 
nature, soon acquired a religious significance 
through the doctrine of the continuity of the chain 
of prophets. Whereas orthodox Islam looks upon 
Mohammed as the last of the prophets, the Shiahs 
believed that the divine revelation continued through 
Ali and his family; as the " Wali " (confidant) of 
God, they set Ali even above Mohammed and the 
anniversary of the death of All's son, Hosein, who 
fell at Kerbela in 680, they regarded as a much 
more important celebration than even the great feast 
at Mecca. One extreme branch of Shiahs of Persia 
maintained that Ali and the successive legitimate 
Imams were the continuous incarnation of the 
deity^ which recalls the Thibetan doctrine of Dalai- 

285 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

lama. How deeply rooted this thought, originally 
alien to Islamism, grew to be among the Persians, 
was made manifest in the second half of the last 
century by the rise of the Babists, a sect founded 
by Mirza Ali Mohammed, who claimed to be the 
highest embodiment of that same divine spirit 
which had appeared before in Abraham, Moses, 
Jesus and Mohammed. 

It might seem, for a time, that freer thought was 
seeking expression in Islam. The sect of the 
Mutazilites raised objections to the orthodox teach- 
ing of the eternity and infallibility of the Koran, 
the doctrine of predestination, and to the doctrine 
of an arbitrary God, in contradiction to which they 
laid the greatest stress on the righteousness of God. 
In most instances, orthodoxy found it most com- 
fortable to render these rationalists harmless by the 
temporal arm of the Caliph ; however, in the strug- 
gle with them, there developed a theology which 
sought to employ the dialectics learned from the 
heretics in defense of the orthodox doctrines. Al- 
Ashari (died 941), its most illustrious represen- 
tative, may be regarded as the founder of the 
dogmatic theology of Islamism. In the question of 
predestination, for example, he decided entirely in 
the sense of the Christian Semipelagians : it is the 
part of man to will, but it belongs to God to fulfill. 
Again, in the case of the sinlessness of the prophet : 
the possibility of sinful action was in him, but the 
divine watchfulness united with his own merit as 

286 



Islam 

the prophet had never permitted the realization. 
But the rationahsts were not defeated by the fine- 
ness of this dialectic play, but by immutable char- 
acter inherent in Islamism from the beginning, they 
were overthrown. The great mass of the people 
recognized their Allah and the Allah of Mohammed, 
not in the God of the Mutazilites whose nature was 
righteousness, but in the God of the orthodox, the 
Almighty, who was bound to no other law but his 
own arbitrary will. 

A peculiarity of Persian Islamism, not less in- 
teresting is Sufism, a mystical-speculative tendency, 
some of which was deeply pious and given to flights 
of high thinking. Certain it is that this was not a 
genuine product of Arabian Islamism, even though 
it must remain undecided whether it owes its origin 
to ancient Persian, Indian or Neo-platonic gnosti- 
cism. According to the Sufi theory, the world is 
a flowing out of and flowing back into God. The 
soul of man is part of the divine being, and its 
destiny is union with God, which is perfected in 
three planes. Upon the first plane, the plane of 
law, God is held to be the Lord beyond who desires 
to be worshipped with all the traditional ceremonies. 
Upon the second plane, comes the knowledge that 
external works are without value for those who 
know, and in their stead there must be placed 
an ascetic freeing of the spirit from sensuality. 
Through continuous concentration of thought, one 
may arrive finally at the condition of enthusiasm 

287 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

and ecstasy whicli, by frequent recurrence, leads to 
the third and highest plane, upon which, God is no 
longer sought outside of one's self either by ritual- 
istic or ascetic works, but upon which, the imma- 
nence in one's own spirit come into consciousness. 
For the wise man and the mystic who has attained 
this knowledge, the varying doctrines and ordi- 
nances of the different religions have lost their 
meaning. Here are some examples of the thought- 
laden, pious poems of the Persian mystic, Dschela- 
leddin Rumi (1207- 1275) •* 

*'When the pious pray, glory and praise, indeed, 
Into one, all worship-offerings knead. 
What, in his faith, each one, praying says, 
Not the water, but the glass divides. 
All glory and all praise flow but for the one. 
Into one vessel; God pours the glasses all. 
Know this, from God's light emanates each pray'r, 
From form or fissure comes the false that's there. 
Upon a wall, when simple sunlight plays, 
The one sun's shattered to a thousand rays. 

** Those who to Caaba make pilgrimage, 
And reach at length their goal, 
See an old house standing 
In a seedless vale. 
They went there, God to see 
And now they circle 'round the house. 
Circling thus time after time, they wait 
Until a voice sounds on the air: 
Fools, do ye call upon a stone? 
Who would beg bread of stone? 

*The German versions are by Tholuk and Rueckert, 
288 



Islam 

If 'tis God's temple that ye seek, 
Search within; within your hearts, 'tis built. 
Happy he who turns in unto himself, 
Travelling no deserts in pilgrimage. 

*'0 love, I bear thee witness. Sad as the night, I wept 
And the rays of thy sun brought day to me. 
Soul of my soul, I am thou and thou art I, 
Thou art all, and thro' thee, I woke to all. 
Sweetness art thou and intoxication. 
The pearl-fraught sea art thou, the mine of gold. 
He who comes near to thee, gives up his soul to thee, 
Dies when thy mouth is wroth, dies when thine eye doth 

smile. 
First doth thy favor lure the loving ones to thee. 
Then comes thy wrath and chokes the weaklings in the 

fray. 
Dream-hosts serve thee and wraiths of fancy go 
Forth with fiery weapons as thy battle-array; 
Flame flaunts the banner of thy unending sway. 
Burning until worlds bow down before thee. 
Each moment, terrors new thou sendest forth. 
Making the soul tremble as a little child; 
Then, if the soul yield and thou dost enter in. 
Victorious, — ^thy coming is kindlier than she had thought. 

**0 bird, for freedom calling. 
And thou, whom the body- cage is galling, 
O soul, wouldst thou be free? 
Then love the love that tameth thee: 
'Tis love that tightens ev'ry tie, 
'Tis love the strongest lock can pry; 
Love's the pure music of the spheres. 
No clanking chains therein one hears. 
The world is God's mirror clear. 
Except thy eye be dazzled here; 
Gaze in the glass with loving glance 
And be confounded by God's brilliance; 

289 



Religion and Historic Faiths 

Praise him, O soul, drunk with love, 
Winging at dawn, like the lark, above. 

**Make no complaint that thou art cast in chains, 
Make no complaint that thou must bear earth's pains; 
Complain not that the wide world is restraint. 
The world becomes a jail thro' thy complaint. 
Ask not how will this riddle finally unfold; 
Beautifully, tho' thy question be untold. 
Say not: Love hath forsaken me. 
Whom hath love forsaken? I beg of thee. 
Be bold when grim death would make thee fear, 
Death yields to those who boldly face him here. 
Chase not worldly pleasures as the fleet hart; 
It turns into a lion and plays the hunter's part. 
Cast not thyself in chains, O heart, then canst thou 
Make no complaint that thou art cast in chains. 

"I am the grape, come thou and be the vine, 
The elm, round which my branching arms entwine. 
I am the ivy, cedar, be my stem, 
That I stay not dead on the moist earth. 
I am the bird, come thou and be my wings, 
That I may soar aloft to thy high heav'n. 
I am the steed, come thou and be my spurs, 
That I may strive to reach thy race-course goal. 
I am the bed of roses, be thou my rose, 
That I nourish not sorry weeds. 
I am the East, O sun, rise thou in me. 
From my cloud-fabric, thou light, arise, 
I am the night, be thou my crown of stars. 
That, self-fearing, I tremble not, when 'tis dark. 

• • • • •. im 

** Commingled with thy soul hath mine 
As water mingles with the wine. 
Who can the wine and water part ? 
Who rend our union, mine and thine? 
My larger self art thou become; 

290 



Islam 

This smaller self will I resign. 
My nature hast thou taken on; 
Shall, nay, must I not take thine? 
For aye, hast thou affirmed me 
That I deny thee not in time. 
Thy love-aroma permeating me 
Marrow nor bone can e'er resign. 
Flutelike, upon thy lips I rest, 
Lutelike, upon thy lap, recline. 
One breath lend thou, for I would sigh, 
One blow strike thou, for I would pine. 
Sweet are my sighs and sweet my tears 
For all the world thinks joy is mine. 
Deep in my soul's depths dost thou rest 
And mirror 'd there's thy heaven sublime. 
O, precious jewel in my shaft, 
O, pearl in my mussel-shrine." 



291 



CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 

by Otto Pfleiderer, D.D. 

Translated by Daniel A. Huebsch, Ph.D. 

Uniform with this volume^ $1.50 net 



"The viewpoint from which the origin of Christianity is 
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relation to other methods of treatment. It lies in the nature 
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origin of our religion will differ vastly and in many ways from 
the traditional Church presentation. Hence, this book has 
not been written for such readers as feel satisfied by the 
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and confuse them in their convictions; I would feel sorry 
for that because I cherish a respect for every honest faith. 
But I know that in all classes and circles of society to-day 
there are many men and women who have entirely outgrov* n 
the traditional church-faith and who are possessed of an 
urgent desire to learn what is to be thought, from the stand- 
point of modern science, concerning the origin of this faith 
and concerning the eternal and temporal in it. To go out 
toward such truth- seekers is a duty which the trained repre- 
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push themselves forward and increase the confusion of souls 
by their arbitrary notions." — Extract from preface, 

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and dogmas have given them." — The Arena. 

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book thus gives a complete philosophy of education, 
focusing upon its center, the cultivation of sound and 
effective character. At the same time it contains 
definite applications of all the principles developed to 
the practical work of parents and teachers. It is 
therefore of value alike to those who are interested in 
the larger problem of education in relation to life and 
to those who are engaged, in home and school, in 
the task of helping children to grow into sane, bal- 
anced and helpful men and women. The footnotes 
gather up much of the wisest thinking on moral edu- 
cation hitherto and, as well, guide readers to the best 
modern studies of childhood. The full, annotated 
bibUography adds to the practical working value of 
the book for students. 



*'It is easily the best book of its kind yet written in 
America." — The Literary Digest. 

*' Edward Howard Griggs has written a notable book on 
'Moral Education/ easily the most profound, searching and 
practical that has been written in this country, and which, 
from the same qualities, will not be. easily displaced in its 
primacy." — The Cleveland Leader, 

** The book is a notable one, wholesome and readable." 

— Educational Review, 

B. W. HUEBSCH Publisher New York 



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